Nicky Dries

KU Leuven | ku leuven · Research Centre of Work & Organisation Studies

Both in academic research and HR practice, talent management has traditionally been approached as a set of strategic interventions primarily targeting élite groups of so-called ‘high-potential’ employees, who make up at most 5 to 20% of an organization’s workforce. In recent years, however, HR practitioners and business leaders seem to have become...

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Across six different streams of the literature (i.e., HRM; I/O psychology; educational psychology; vocational psychology; positive psychology; social psychology) we identify a number of discrepancies (i.e., between practitioner and academic interest; between talent management discourse and practice), theoretica...

This study employs Uncertainty Management Theory (UMT) to explore how co-workers respond to supervisors’ communication about idiosyncratic deals (i-deals), specifically comparing secrecy and transparency. We suggest that co-workers’ perceptions of i-deal secrecy, as opposed to transparency, lead to uncertainty. Moreover, misalignment between co-wor...

We examine the assumption that making workforce differentiation practices more inclusive will cause employees to react more positively. We identify a fundamental ‘paradox of inclusion’, where practices designed to be more inclusive may in fact decrease employees' perceived inclusion. Drawing on social comparison theory and the ‘genius effect’ – usi...

Due to recent technological developments, vignette studies that have traditionally been done in text or video formats can now be done in immersive formats using virtual reality—but are such virtual reality video vignettes superior to traditional vignettes? To address this question, we examine participants’ experiences within a fictitious organizati...

Based on social identity theory, exclusive talent programs can be understood to divide employees into two groups—‘talents’ versus ‘non-talents’—creating a setting where ostracism may occur. Using 360°-video vignettes (Study 1; N = 184) and text vignettes (Study 2 and 3; N = 243 and 573) we recreate a fictional HR board meeting and trouble three ass...

Across two datasets—a corpus of 485 print media articles and a multi-actor survey of Tech/Innovation experts, Authors/Journalists, Economy/Labor Market experts, Policy Makers/Public Administrators, and Engaged Citizens (N=570)—we build the case that the future of work is a fiction, not a fact; or better yet, a series of competing fictions prescribi...

This fascinating book comprises case studies of careers from 24 countries across the globe, highlighting culture-specific career issues, and encouraging reflection on one’s own career. Interwoven with current theoretical and empirical insights from career studies, it emphasises the importance of our respective contextual settings.

We propose a new way of seeing the effects of organizational secrecy on employee reactions to workplace inequalities by bringing in key insights borrowed from communication science—i.e., that not all uncertainty management necessarily requires the reduction of uncertainty, and that ambiguity can be a more effective and desirable communication strat...

Talentmanagement neemt in populariteit toe en is een strategie om veelbelovende werknemers te identificeren en ondersteunen. In de huidige tijdgeest neemt echter het enthousiasme voor een exclusief beleid, waar maar een klein deel van de werknemers als 'talent' wordt gezien, razendsnel af onder het mom van gelijke behandeling. Al ruim tien jaar zij...

In this paper, we critically examine the assumption that most employees, and especially those not identified as talents, find exclusive talent management less fair than inclusive talent management. Across two factorial survey studies—one of which manipulates talent status experimentally (N = 300), the other using field data on meta‐perceived talent...

We examine how peers form talent appraisals of team members, reframing talent identification as a status‐organising social process. Using decision trees, we modelled configurations of characteristics and behaviours that predicted dominant versus parallel routes to achieving the status of most talented team member. Across 44 multidisciplinary teams,...

Subjective career success continues to be a critical topic in careers scholarship due to ever changing organizational and societal contexts that make reliance upon external definitions of success untenable or undesirable. While various measures of subjective career success have been developed, there is no measure that is representative of multiple...

This study examines how identification with management and the organization explains the relationship between talent status, organizational citizenship behavior towards the organization (OCB‐O) and the supervisor (OCB‐S), and turnover intention. Using archival and survey data (N = 597), we tested two competing models: a parallel and a serial mediat...

Careers exist in a societal context that offers both constraints and opportunities for career actors. Whereas most studies focus on proximal individual and/or organizational level variables, we provide insights into how career goals and behaviors are understood and embedded in the more distal societal context. More specifically, we operationalize s...

Multilevel paradigms have permeated organizational research in recent years, greatly advancing our understanding of organizational behavior and management decisions. Despite the advancements made in multilevel modeling, taking into account complex hierarchical structures in data remains challenging. This is particularly the case for models used for...

HR managers have different beliefs about the nature, value, and instrumentality of talent—referred to as ‘talent philosophies’. In line with cognitive psychology, we reason that talent philosophies are similar to mental models that influence how HR managers interpret and use talent management (TM) practices within their organizations. In this artic...

We introduce career success schemas as critical for understanding how people in different contexts perceive and understand career success. Using a comparative configurational approach, we show, in a study of thirteen countries, that two structural characteristics of career success schemas—complexity and convergence—differ across country contexts an...

Algemeen wordt verondersteld dat een werknemer die geïdentificeerd wordt als talent binnen zijn of haar organisatie daar positief op reageert qua attitude (bv. door een sterkere betrokkenheid bij de organisatie) en gedrag (bv. door een grotere inzet op het werk). Indien dergelijke positieve reacties uitblijven, zouden organisaties namelijk moeten a...

In this paper, we propose that untapped potential acts as a subjective temporal meaning‐making mechanism. Using a two‐wave survey design, we examine the relationship between job characteristics, untapped potential, and work meaningfulness in a heterogeneous sample of 542 employees. We found that employees’ perceived amount of untapped potential med...

This review examines competing perspectives relating to (a) the range and prevalence of different theoretical approaches to the study of career success and (b) the need for a theoretically differentiated understanding of the antecedents of objective (OCS) versus subjective (SCS) career success. Furthermore, the review complements the assumption tha...

Whilst career proactivity has positive consequences for an individual’s career success, studies mostly examine objective measures of success within single countries. This raises important questions about whether proactivity is equally beneficial for different aspects of subjective career success, and the extent to which these benefits extend across...

Two assumptions about employee reactions are currently driving debates around talent management (TM): First, that TM leads to positive outcomes in employees identified as talents; and second, that TM creates differences between talents and employees not identified as talents. This review critically evaluates these assumptions by contrasting theoret...

From quantity to quality to impact.

Due to the strikingly diverse forms talent management takes in the field, confusion has arisen about the meaning of the term ‘talent’ itself, especially in the context of cross-cultural organizing within multinational enterprises (MNEs). Taking an emic approach to this problem—examining the phenomenon of global talent management (GTM) from the pers...

This study aimed to challenge the ‘‘uniformity myth’’ in career counseling outcome studies—that is, a tendency toward studying career counseling clients as homogenous, implicitly assuming that the same outcomes would be beneficial to all clients. To this end, we examined the role of clients’ initial career counseling goals. We hypothesized that a c...

In recent years, talent management (put briefly, the differential treatment of high-performing/high-potential employees by organizations) seems to have gained some academic legitimacy, as demonstrated by a recent bibliometric analysis (Gallardo-Gallardo, Nijs, Dries, & Gallo, in press). Of particular interest are its (behavioral and attitudinal) ef...

This review adopts a phenomenon-driven approach in reviewing the talent management (TM) literature, applying methods derived from bibliometrics and content analysis to evaluate the state of the field and derive implications for research and practice unbiased towards a-priori assumptions of which frameworks or methods are most adequate. Based on ana...

This review adopts a phenomenon-driven approach in reviewing the talent management (TM)literature, applying methods derived from bibliometrics and content analysis to evaluate the state of the field and derive implications for research and practice unbiased towards a-priori assumptions of which frameworks or methods are most adequate. Based on anal...

Employee differences in terms of expertise, performance, talents, needs and demographic characteristics are increasingly prevalent in organizations and considered important to provide organizations with a competitive edge. Yet, for an organization to capitalize on those differences, it may need to take them into account in its human resource manage...

Many organizations are currently facing an aging workforce and have therefore called for researchers to examine how older employees can be optimally motivated and retained. To this end, we believe it is essential to understand what older employees expect from their organization. We therefore introduce the psychological contract—describing the mutua...

In the hotly anticipated second edition of Understanding Careers, Kerr Inkson has teamed up with John Arnold and Nicky Dries to take readers on a fascinating journey through the field of Career Studies. Interdisciplinary –the text brings together and critiques a range of perspectives, allowing for a broader and more holistic understanding of the fi...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between self-perceived employability resources and perceived psychological contract (PC) obligations. To examine the extent to which organizational ratings of potential, through their “signaling” function, might serve as a buffer between employability and PC perceptions that are undes...

In this chapter we aim to advance understanding of the meanings attributed to ‘talent’ by HR directors across the world (N = 410), and how their ‘talent mindsets’ translate into the ways in which talent is identified and managed in their organizations. Respondents from different cultural clusters mentioned ability, skills, knowledge, and potential...

We examined how perceived distributive and procedural justice affected the relationship between an employee's identification as a high potential (drawn from archival data), job satisfaction, and work effort. A questionnaire was distributed within one large company among employees who were and employees who were not identified as a high potential (N...

While the selection of top managers is vital to the performance and survival of organizations, the process by which these managers are selected remains uncharted territory. In this conceptual article, we propose that both structural conditions of and the selection process for top management positions are different from those at lower organizational...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the implicit beliefs both high potentials and HR directors hold about the terms of the exchange relationship between high potential employees and their organizations. The paper positions the study within the framework of the psychological contract, exploring specifically whether strategic ambiguity...

We examined how perceived organisational support affects the relationship between being designated as talent and affective commitment. Two studies were conducted in two different ‘talent’ populations. In study one, a questionnaire was distributed within one large company among employees who were designated as high potential, and a control group whi...

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t The ongoing confusion about the meaning of 'talent' within the world of work is hindering the establishment of widely accepted talent management theories and practices. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the literature on talent management by offering an in-depth review of the talent concept within the s...

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Talent management is in need of a theoretical foundation and empirical research at the level of the individual. To address these gaps, the current paper relies on the literature on workforce differentiation and provides a research agenda by introducing perceived organizational justice as a key mediator between...

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t In order to contribute to the theoretical understanding of talent management, this paper aims to shed light on the meaning of the term 'talent' by answering the following question: Is talent predominantly an innate construct, is it mostly acquired, or does it result from the interaction between (specific levels...

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Organizations report great difficulty in measuring talent accurately, reflecting the lack of theoretical foundations for talent-identification in the HRM literature. This multidisciplinary review aims to contribute to the establishment of a stronger theoretical basis for talent-management by presenting a conceptual framework of talent in which the...

For over a decade now, policy makers, career practitioners and researchers have been discussing the importance of achieving lifelong access to career counseling. As careers are becoming increasingly turbulent, traditional career counseling services - which focus mainly on supporting students in making a career decision - are considered no longer su...