Conceptualising talent in multinational hotel corporations

Abstract

Purpose To identify, develop and retain talent, an important first step is to ensure that key stakeholders in the talent management (TM) process have a shared view of what is meant by talent within the organisation. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise how talent is defined in the context of the hospitality industry and to examine the degree of (mis)alignment among corporate and business unit leaders. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a qualitative approach consisting of 73 interviews with stakeholders at corporate and business unit levels in three multinational hotel corporations. In addition, documents were collected and analysed to support the interview data. Findings Each organisation had a formal approach to conceptualising talent at a corporate level. Both inclusive and exclusive views on talent as well as a broad set of characteristics that make up talent were reported with the importance of organisational values being prominent. However, despite formal global policies being in place, considerable divergence in practice was found across organisational levels. Practical implications A lack of clarity on what talent means in an organisational setting may lead to an inconsistent talent identification process which may lead to negative perceptions of fairness among employees. This may, in turn, bring about disgruntled employees and increased turnover. Originality/value This paper provides empirical evidence to the limited body of knowledge on the conceptualisation of talent. The display of organisational values emerged as important to being labelled talent, a factor that has received scant consideration in the literature.

Exploring the determinants of an organisational talent culture for a Botswanan local government institution

“…The definition of Painter-Morland et al (2019) presents a more personal approach towards talent management by considering the unique social and cultural backgrounds of individuals. Moreover, dominant elitist organisational culture perspectives to talent management are challenged to allow for an inclusive talent approach whereby all employees are considered of potential value to the organisation (Dimitrov 2015;Jooss et al 2019). Swailes, Downs and Orr (2014) advise that inclusive talents need to be deployed in a position that best fits those talents.…”

Talent designation in practice: an equation of high potential, performance and mobility

“…The TM literature provides little in terms of empirical evidence that illuminates the operationalisation of talent in practice (Church & Rotolo, 2013;Gallardo-Gallardo, Nijs, Dries, & Gallo, 2015). Indeed, papers often fail to set out how talent is defined (Gallardo-Gallardo et al, 2015;Jooss, McDonnell, Burbach, & Vaiman, 2019;McDonnell, Collings, Mellahi, & Schuler, 2017), and where they do, they rarely tend to move away from simply referring to high potentials and/or high performers at an aggregate level without considering individual indicators of potential and performance in detail (McDonnell et al, 2017;Thunnissen, 2016). Too often the literature takes a loose assumption of a shared meaning and consensus on what talent is.…”

Talent management in hospitality and tourism: a systematic literature review and research agenda

“…Only a few scholars, then, accept the subject approach to talent. We can thus argue that an object approach to talent is more widely used in the H&T compared to the subject approach (Jooss et al , 2019b; see Table 6).…”