Macro Talent Management

A Global Perspective on Managing Talent in Developed Markets

Vlad Vaiman, Paul Sparrow, Randall Schuler, David G. Collings, Vlad Vaiman, Paul Sparrow, Randall Schuler, David G. Collings

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351778350
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Macro Talent Management: A Global Perspective on Managing Talent in Developed Markets is the first book to focus specifically on country-level activities aimed at attracting, mobilizing, developing, and retaining top talent for economic success in developed markets. The book serves as a guide that orients the reader toward activities that increase their country's global competitiveness, attractiveness, and economic development through strategic talent management.

This book brings together leading experts from around the world to address such isues as cross-border flows of talent, diaspora mobility, knowledge flows, global labour markets, and policies.

Bringing together research from the fields of human resource management, international business, economic geography, comparative international development, and political economy, this is a definitive, comprehensive treatment of the topic aimed at advanced students and practitioners.

1
Macro Talent Management in the United States

Framework, Context, Processes and Outcomes

Randall Schuler, Ibraiz Tarique and Shaista Khilji

Interest in the United States in talent management (TM) increased significantly in the 1990s when a group of McKinsey consultants coined the phrase ‘war for talent’ in late 1990s to emphasize the vital importance of employees to the success of top performing companies (Michaels, Hanfield-Jones, & Axelford, 2001; Scullion & Collings, 2016). While certainly important, TM tended to focus mainly on the individual and organizational levels, and minimize several macro or country factors of the global environment that have since become more recognized as invaluable for TM at the individual and organizational levels (Khilji & Schuler, 2018; Khilji, Tarique, & Schuler, 2015; Oxford Economics, 2014; Strack, Von Der Linden, Booker, & Strohamyr, 2011). This growth in TM at the individual and organizational levels in the United States occurred despite the long-standing interest in talent management in the global context, or the macro (country) level, especially outside the United States. In particular, non-governmental organizations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), IMD’s World Competitiveness Center, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development began publishing reports about the importance of talent, education and quality of a country’s workforce in the 1980s.

Since the early 1980s several other studies, many outside the United States, have continued to highlighted the macro, country, view of talent management (Khilji and Schuler, 2018; Sparrow, Brewster, & Chung, 2017; Cooke, Saini, & Wang, 2014; The Economist, 2013; Heidrick & Struggles, 2007, 2011; Khilji et al., 2015; Oxford Economics, 2014; WEF, Human Capital Reports, 2013, 2015, 2016; Lanvin & Evans, 2014, 2015, 2017). These studies and reports showed that many governments have joined the hunt for global talent by developing immigrant friendly policies. Some governments have also been luring back skilled diaspora, and many others have been making serious investments in education and human development of their own citizens with the purpose of spurring economic growth by upgrading local capabilities and building innovative capacities for the firms in their countries (Lanvin & Evans, 2014, 2015, 2017; Evans & Lanvin, 2015; Khilji et al., 2015; Ragazzi, 2014). This has certainly impacted thinking about the macro context of TM in the United States (Khilji & Schuler, 2018).

Thus today, active involvement of various governmental and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and several consulting firms, in attracting and developing talent makes TM truly a global issue, which reaches beyond a single organization, and even a single country and their talent management activities. It draws attention to complexity of the macro environment within which organizations in the United States develop their talent management systems, and individuals make career choices (Khilji & Schuler, 2018; Khilji et al., 2015; Khilji & Keilson, 2014). It incorporates cross border flow of talent, diaspora mobility and government policies to attract, grow, develop and retain the talent nationally for innovation, productivity and competitiveness, which facilitates talent management activities within organizations.

It is, therefore, important in the United States that the scope of talent management (TM) extend beyond an individual and organizational analysis to incorporate the macro level in order to fully comprehend the complexities of managing talent in today’s globalized world, where organizations are not only competing with each other but where governments, organizations and their societies have also joined the race (Sparrow et al., 2017; Lanvin & Evans, 2014, 2015, 2017; Ragazzi, 2014; Economist, 2011). As such, we adopt the definition of macro talent management (MTM) for the United States offered in the Introductory chapter of this book as:

Factors such as the demographics, the economic, educational, social and political conditions of countries and the policies, programs and activities that are systematically developed by governmental and non-governmental organizations expressly for the purpose of enhancing the quality and quantity of talent within and across countries and regions to facilitate productivity, innovation and competitiveness of their domestic and multinational enterprises for the benefit of their citizens, organizations, and societies for long term advantage.

By promoting the macro perspective, we want to further broaden the scope of TM in the United States beyond its current main focus (on the individual and organizational levels). What we are describing, therefore, is not “global talent management” (which is focused on the individual and organizational levels), but talent management in the global context, which is focused on the macro level, or country level (it is both within a single country and/or across countries). At this macro level, talent is defined to include a large majority of a country’s population, similar to companies that pursue an inclusive approach in their talent management activities. However, research has also shown that many countries also pursue an exclusive approach to target a small portion of the workforce (Khilji & Keilson, 2014).

To help facilitate our discussion of MTM in the United States, we build on a framework of MTM that encapsulates macro environmental factors, processes and activities that are broadly presented in Figure 0.1 in this book’s Introductory chapter. Because this framework is relatively new (Khilji & Schuler, 2018), we describe its components in more detail and use it to describe the MTM context of the United States. In doing so, we also provide the reader with an extensive set of references and data sources that can used for further elaboration on what is presented in this chapter. These references and sources can also be used for other countries.

While Figure 1.1 is our framework for describing MTM in the United States, it reflects the underlying frameworks that are being used by several NGOs (such as the WEF, the

Figure 1.1 Talent Management in Global Context: A Conceptual Framework of Macro Talent Management (MTM)

Adapted from S.E. Khilji and R. S. Schuler, “Talent Management in the Global Context,” a chapter in D. Collings, K. Mellahi, and W. Cascio (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Talent Management, Oxford Press (Oxford, England, 2018).

ILO, INSEAD, IMD and the World Bank) and consulting firms (such as McKinsey, Hays, and BCG) to similarly describe a country’s level of talent management capability (infrastructure) as it endeavors to be more competitive and productive vis-à-vis other countries of the world. The headlines of reports from these organizations and firms typically report the overall rankings of talent management success and/or country level competitiveness and productivity based upon its talent management infrastructure. But these overall rankings can be thought of as the outcomes of a country’s macro environmental factors and the MTM processes as shown in Figure 1.1. Fortunately, the reports from these organizations and firms also provide the extensive details behind these overall rankings. Thus, using Figure 1.1, the reports essentially obtain the detailed country information from a wide variety of sources that measure the macro environmental factors and the MTM processes shown in Figure 1.1. Then the reports combine that information and construct rankings of the countries around the world on the MTM outcomes/consequences, also shown in Figure 1.1. While some of these reports, notably from the World Economic Forum, gather and report on more information than related to solely talent management, our focus in this chapter is on that information related to talent management at the country level (which can also include macro levels, i.e., those above the individual and organizational levels, such as cities and states). More specifically, the information used here to describe our framework for MTM in the United States in Figure 1.1 is largely based on the reports from:

• The World Economic Forum and its Global Competitiveness Index
• The World Economic Forum and LinkedIn and their Human Capital Report
• The Global Talent Index from the Economist Intelligence Unit and Heidrick & Struggles
• INSEAD and its Global Talent Competitiveness Index
• IMD and its World Talent Ranking Factors
• OECD and its Performance Indicators of Student Assessment (PISA)
• The World Bank and its indicators of Doing Business; and Employing Workers
• Hays Global Skills Index

While the talent management contributions of consulting firms are often more focused on the company and individual levels, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction: Macro Talent Management in Developed Markets: Foundations for a Developing Field
• 1. Macro Talent Management in the United States: Framework, Context, Processes and Outcomes
• 2. Macro Talent Management in Canada: A Review of the National Context, Competitive Strengths and Future Opportunities to Attract, Develop and Retain Talent
• 3. Macro Talent Management in the UK: Patterns of Agency in a Period of Changing Regimes
• 4. Macro Talent Management in Germany: A Strong Economy Facing the Challenges of a Shrinking Labor Force
• 5. Macro Talent Management in Spain: Is the Sun Rising Again?
• 6. Macro Talent Management in Denmark: The Origins of Danish Talent Paradox
• 7. Macro Talent Management in Finland: Contributing to a Rapidly Evolving Knowledge Economy
• 8. Macro Talent Management in the Netherlands: A Critical Analysis of Growing and Retaining Talent in the Netherlands
• 9. Macro Talent Management in Australia: Balancing Industrial Relations, Isolation and Global Competitiveness
• Appendix: Useful Research Sources, Talent Rankings and Cross-Country Indices
• Index