A Multilevel Perspective on Talent Management – Qualitative Explorations and an Explanatory Framework Inaugural dissertation submitted to attain the academic degree doctor rerum politicarum (Doktor der Wirtschaftswissenschaften) at the ESCP Business School Berlin by M., Katharina Harsch Born October 15th, 1985 in Waiblingen, Germany Berlin 2021 Doctoral examination committee: Prof. Matthias Mrożewski Prof. Marion Festing Prof. Helen De Cieri Day of disputation: September 7, 2021 Table of Contents List of Figures.
III List of Tables. III List of Abbreviations. Relevance in business practice and research. Delimitations and definition of talent and talent management.
Definition of talent. Definition of talent management. Scope of talent management. The current state of research, and the aim of the thesis.
Talent management in different contexts. Outcomes and values of talent management. Theoretical frameworks in talent management research. The call for multilevel talent management research, and the aim of the thesis.
Fundamental elements of the multilevel perspective. Overview of the research manuscripts. Overview of Manuscript 1: Focus, theoretical foundations and findings. Overview of Manuscript 2: Focus, theoretical foundations and findings.
Overview of Manuscript 3: Focus, theoretical foundations and findings. Research designs and methods. Ontological and epistemological assumption. Manuscript 1: Macro talent management in Germany.
Manuscript 2: Managing non-family talent. Manuscript 3: Dynamic talent management capabilities and organisational agility. Multilevel talent management – synthesis of the key findings and an explanatory framework. Theoretical justification for talent management as a nested system.
The three levels of talent management as a nested system. The macro level. The meso level. The micro level.
Interrelations within the nested talent management system. Influence of the macro level. Influence of the meso level. Influence of the micro level.
Conceptual and empirical contribution. Limitations and implications for further research. 70 II List of Figures Figure 1: Multilevel nesting arrangement. 23 Figure 2: Levels of talent management examined by the manuscripts.
26 Figure 3: Conceptual macro talent management framework. 28 Figure 4: Talent management as a nested system. 48 Figure 5: The macro level of talent management as a nested system. 49 Figure 6: The meso level of talent management as a nested system.
51 List of Tables Table 1: Overview of the manuscripts. 25 III List of Abbreviations CEO(s) chief executive officers (CEOs) DMGT Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent Ed(s). editor(s) et al. et alii (and others) etc.
exempli gratia (for example) EUR Euro (currency) EIASM European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management GLOBE global leadership and organisational behaviour effectiveness HR human resources HRM human resource management i. id est (that is) MNE(s) multinational enterprise(s) NFT(s) non-family talent(s) SME(s) small- and medium-sized enterprise(s) TM talent management IV 1. Introduction Talents are considered a key source of sustainable competitive advantage for companies (Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Gallardo-Gallardo, Thunnissen, & Scullion, 2020; Sparrow & Makram, 2015), and they are characterised by both excellent inputs, i. potential, ability and motivation, and outstanding outputs in the form of performance (Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, 2016).
Even though it is two decades since talent management (TM) was introduced as a hot topic in business practice (Chambers, Foulon, Handfield-Jones, & Michaels, 1998), the attraction and retention of talent is now more topical than ever, and it is seen as one of the most important human resource (HR) functions (Strack, 2014), as the filling of key positions (Collings & Mellahi, 2009) is both a success factor and an increasing challenge for companies (Gallardo-Gallardo, et al., 2020; KPMG, 2019; McDonnell, Collings, Mellahi, & Schuler, 2017). The environment in which companies operate today is exemplified by an unprecedented level of complexity and dynamism, advancing digitisation, increasing globalisation and socio-economic and demographic changes increasing demand and shortening the supply of talent, due to new requirements they need to fulfil (PwC, 2014, 2019). This makes the availability of suitable talent not only all the more important, but also significantly more difficult to achieve (Gallardo-Gallardo, et al., 2020; Schwartz, Collins, Stockton, Wagner, & Walsh, 2017). The current Covid-19 crisis has resulted in special challenges in this regard, and talent deficits are becoming more apparent (Caligiuri, De Cieri, Minbaeva, Verbeke, & Zimmermann, 2020).
TM’s mission is to provide companies with the right talent, i. to attract, select, develop and retain them, in order to meet specific company needs (Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Stahl et al. Thus, TM creates value and contributes to the competitive advantage of a company through the appropriate reconfiguration of the talent resource (Collings, Mellahi, & Cascio, 2019; Harsch & Festing, 2020; Linden & Teece, 2014; Sparrow & Makram, 2015). 1 TM is a rapidly growing field of research that has made some progress in the last decade.
Research to date has mainly focused on the definition of talent and TM, as well as its practices, their implementation and effects in a wide variety of contexts (Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, 2016; McDonnell, et al., 2017; Thunnissen & Gallardo-Gallardo, 2019). Today, there is broad consensus that TM is context- dependent (Sparrow & Makram, 2015; Sparrow, Vaiman, Schuler, & Collings, 2019; Thunnissen, Boselie, & Fruytier, 2013b) and shows up in different orientations, talent definitions and practices in relation to a range of environments, companies or target groups. Hence, TM effectiveness seems to depend on alignment with the context in which it is embedded (King & Vaiman, 2019) and, albeit indirectly, on the talent on which the emphasis is placed (Thunnissen, 2016). This assumption corresponds with the ‘best fit’ approach to TM (Gallardo-Gallardo, et al., 2020), which is based on contingency theory (Drazin & Van de Ven, 1985; Van de Ven & Drazin, 1985).
However, the influences on TM, in particular of different factors on several levels, as well as their interrelationships, have not yet been sufficiently investigated (Gallardo- Gallardo, et al. To date, the TM system at the macro (i. the country) level and its influence on TM on the organisational level have been largely neglected in TM research (Khilji & Schuler, 2017; Khilji, Tarique, & Schuler, 2015). Furthermore, the influence and interaction between several differentiating organisational contextual factors at the meso level, such as organisational culture, structure or ownership, also do not seem to have been sufficiently illuminated, and a further contextualisation of TM should therefore be sought (Sparrow & Makram, 2015; Sparrow, Scullion, & Tarique, 2014).
Additionally, talent at the micro (i. individual) level and its influence on TM at the organisational level have not been given sufficient importance in research (Collings, 2014; Farndale, Pai, Sparrow, & Scullion, 2014; Thunnissen, 2016). Overall, increasingly more researchers are calling for multilevel TM research that also takes into account the interrelationships between the levels, in order to attain a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon (Collings, 2014; Gallardo-Gallardo, et al. TM research in this regard is only at the beginning, and so far only a few academics have viewed the topic from a multilevel perspective (for instance Collings, et al., 2019; Muratbekova-Touron, Kabalina, & Festing, 2018).
This thesis seeks to contribute to the field in these respects. The overarching aim of this thesis is to draw a comprehensive picture of TM and to explore and explain what factors on the macro, meso and micro levels influence it, and vice versa. Taking a multilevel perspective, incorporating influencing factors on multiple levels and explaining their interrelations as well as their influences on TM at the organisational level and its effects should lead to recommendations for actions. To reach this research goal, the following three manuscripts, which this thesis comprises, investigate different aspects in this regard: ▪ Manuscript 1 deals with macro TM in the German context and compiles information on a number of environmental contextual factors, such as cultural and socio-economic conditions and macro TM functions and processes, as well as macro TM outcomes.
▪ Manuscript 2 takes a multilevel perspective and examines TM in the German- speaking region in the context of family businesses, concentrating solely on non- family members. Based on empirical findings from qualitative interviews with owners and non-family top managers of family businesses, and a conceptual examination using stewardship theory, a framework is suggested that incorporates influencing factors on the micro, meso and macro levels and thus explains TM in this specific context. ▪ Manuscript 3, as a qualitative cross-level study, focuses on macro- and meso-level factors. It examines the influence and interrelations of a dynamic, competitive environment and internal agility differentiating factors on organisational TM and its contribution to organisational agility – and thus the potential to add to competitive advantage – by applying dynamic capabilities theory to TM research.
3 The key findings of the manuscripts are synthesised and enriched with findings from the latest TM research while taking a multilevel perspective and considering the principles of contingency theory. As a result, a framework is developed that incorporates factors on the macro, meso and micro levels and explains their interactions and their influence on organisational TM, as well as value creation. Therefore, this thesis not only contributes conceptually and empirically to the research field of TM through the individual three manuscripts, but it also offers a multilevel perspective on TM in the form of an explanatory framework. The remainder of the thesis is as follows.
In Chapter 2, the relevance of TM in business practice and in academia is outlined, the definition of talent and TM and its scope is discussed and a rough overview of the current state of TM research is provided, with a focus on the research gaps addressed by this thesis. This is followed in Chapter 3 by an outline of the theoretical foundations of multilevel research. Chapter 4 gives an overview on the three manuscripts regarding research focus, theoretical foundations and findings before the research design and method as well as ontological and epistemological assumptions are discussed. The three manuscripts are then presented in Chapter 5.
In the following Chapter 6, the key findings taken from the three manuscripts are synthesised and enriched with current research on TM, taking the lens of contingency theory to develop an explanatory framework for TM that considers influencing factors at the macro, meso and micro levels, as well as their interrelationships, thus providing a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon under investigation. Chapter 7 finally deals with the contribution made by this thesis, its limitations and implications for further research as well as managerial practice. Relevance in business practice and research TM is one of the most discussed HR-related topics in business practice and in academia in recent years, as the attraction and retention of suitable employees for key positions contribute significantly to the success of a company (Collings, et al., 2019; PwC, 2019; Schwartz, et al. Around two decades ago, McKinsey management consultants opened the debate when they pointed out that social developments such as demographic changes in many developed countries, e.
falling birth rates and an aging workforce, as well as changing demands on employees due to the increasingly complex and dynamic economy would lead to a 'war for talent' (Chambers, et al. These developments are still present, and the talent shortage problem is acute. Due to increasing global competition, faster changes in customer needs and markets and the growing importance of digitalisation, companies lack respective highly competent employees (McDonnell, et al. Furthermore, the workforce today is increasingly diverse, which in addition to many advantages also brings challenges regarding the attraction and retention of such individuals when dealing with different values and needs (Festing & Schäfer, 2014; McDonnell, et al.
Hence, there are several factors – on multiple levels – fuelling interest in the topic of TM, and they will probably continue to do so in the future. Reports and studies by major business consultancies on current challenges and trends in this area are published annually.
