French Insights on Defining and Managing Talents

Abstract

Research on the topic of talent definition and talent management historically comes from Anglo‐American countries, but the importance of the specific context where these notions emerged often goes unacknowledged. The objective of this research is to clarify the meaning of talent as well as to examine talent‐management practices in France, investigating the possibility of a unique French approach rooted in a different initial context. Based on 39 interviews conducted among employees of 26 global French companies, this study highlights the French idiosyncrasies of the notion of talent: the reconsideration of traditional high‐potential profiles, the preference for insiders, concern about the effects of segmentation, and the role of talents in helping others develop into talents. Accordingly, the multidimensional concept of talent can be refined for a single dimension (the exclusive/inclusive one) and then extended by adding new dimensions. Finally, this article considers the implications of these findings for the managers of French companies, for human resources professionals, and for talents themselves.

Redefining Chinese talent management in a new context: a talent value theory perspective

“…A review of the English literature has illustrated that there are four main theoretical approaches to conceptualising TM (Collings and Mellahi 2009; D'Armagnac et al. 2020; Dries 2013; Iles, Chuai and Preece 2010; King and Vaiman 2019), as summarised in Table 1.…”

“…The second approach can be applied at different levels of analysis, but still within the limits of organisations (D'Armagnac et al. 2020).…”

“…approach can be applied at different levels of analysis, but still within the limits of organisations (D'Armagnac et al 2020). Some scholars argue that the first two theoretical perspectives exaggerate the roles of talent as a form of human capital in enhancing organisational performance and underestimate the impact of context (Dominick and Gabriel 2009;Iles, Chuai and Preece 2010).…”

“…Western and Chinese TM scholars are facing a common dilemma, that is, how to clearly define the concept of TM (Cooke, Saini and Wang 2014; D'Armagnac et al. 2020). The problem now becomes even more complicated, as Vaiman et al.…”

“…Western and Chinese TM scholars are facing a common dilemma, that is, how to clearly define the concept of TM (Cooke, Saini and Wang 2014;D'Armagnac et al 2020). The problem now becomes even more complicated, as Vaiman et al (2021) point out that the dynamics and boundaries of contemporary TM in the global context have been changing under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the current challenging political climate and the emergence of the platform economy and gig workers as well as the advances in technology.…”