Talent management: context matters

Abstract

There is little doubt that the attraction, development, and retention of talent are nowadays one of the most critical challenges faced by companies worldwide. Despite the increasing scholarly attention during the last years many questions remain, particularly, those related to how (and why) talent management (TM) is conceived, implemented and developed within organizations, not to mention about its outcomes or effectiveness. We argue that organizational context has been underappreciated in TM research, which is an omission since context affects the occurrence, meaning and implementation of TM. Therefore, we edited a special issue which seeks to contribute to advance our knowledge of how contextual factors affect the conceptualization, implementation and effectiveness of TM. In this opening article, we offer a brief overview of how context is integrated in previous TM research. We then introduce the four articles in this special issue and their contributions which addresses gap in TM research and, finally, we offer some suggestions on how to improve contextualized TM research.     

Relocating Persia/Iran in the contemporary British tourist imaginary

This paper examines the construction of three different Persias in British cultural tourists’ accounts of their encounters with Iran and its inhabitants and with its Persian heritage. One – which we call Persia-the-Dead – is materialised in the ancient and monumental, and is at the same time heavily mediated by long-standing discourses of Ancient Persia in British and European cultures more generally. A second – which we call Persia-the-Living – is mediated by the same largely Orientalist discourses, but its mobilisation is inflected to include the tourists’ reactions to encounters with Iranians themselves. What finally emerges is a version of what we propose to call Persia-the-British, which combines both perspectives within an analysis of how Orientalist representations of Persia are simultaneously reinforced, updated and at least partially refocused in the encounter between the living and the dead.     

Product Quality With Heterogeneous Consumers and Linear Pricing

This paper considers a linear‐pricing monopolist that conducts vertical product differentiation. Previous analyses consider customers who either have unit demand or firms who conduct nonlinear pricing. In this paper, customers’ opportunity cost of time generates a demand for quality. Customers differ in either their demand, income or taste for quality. Differences in income and taste for quality are sources of vertical differentiation. The presence of quality distortion and the variety that may exhibit it are dependent on the functional form of the customer types’ demand.     

ACCOUNTING REGULATION: AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE: A COMMENT

This paper presents a critique and development of a previous paper by Laughlin and Puxty. It argues that their worldview perspective is an advance on the established self-interest perspective, but is critical of its abstraction of worldviews from their formation within institutional contexts. An alternative interpretation of accounting regulation is offered which relates accounting regulations and standards to the location and investment of the providers and users of accounting information within existing politico-economic institutional arrangements.     

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM OF RETRENCHMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION? [I]

Single- and double-loop organizational learning are discussed in the context of retrenchment in higher education. A model of the research university illuminates impediments to internal resource reallocation, programme elimination and integrative leadership, and suggests the need for alternatives to usual efforts to increase efficiency while retaining existing norms, goals, and organizational structures.     

CHANGES IN THE INTERNATIONAL REGULATION OF AUDITORS: (IN)STALLING THE EIGHTH DIRECTIVE IN THE UK

In 1984 the European Commission issued the Eighth Company Law Directive requiring each member State to ensure that its national rules met common standards for the education, training and qualification of statutory auditors (84/253/EEC; OJ 1984 L126/20). The Directive insisted that national governments take responsibility for the regulation of auditors, a requirement that clashed with the autonomy which many professional bodies believed they possessed. In this article we explore the processes through which the Eighth Directive on the regulation of auditors has been implemented in the UK. We argue that the Eighth Directive illuminates the effects of political and economic discourses on the development of accounting and auditing regulations and the protocols involved in installing such regulations into particular national contexts. The Eighth Directive represents a revealing moment in the shifts in political discourse (towards neo-liberalism) in the UK and the problems of reconciling new modes of economic and political thinking withinternationalregulatory programmes and institutions. Moreover, the implementation of the Eighth Directive in the UK cannot be comprehended outside of (i) an analysis of the problems the British Government has had in “managing” the accountancy profession in the UK and (ii), understanding the powerful image of the auditing industry as a key contributor to the UK economy.     

A review of human resource accounting measurement systems from a measurement theory perspective

Currently, a large number of diverse methodologies exist which apply to the measurement of human resources. This paper attempts to clarify and evaluate these methodologies by the application of a measurement theory frame of reference. The first two sections discuss the measurement theory perspective and then its application to human resource accounting. The last section focuses upon the operational steps necessary to apply measurement theory to the human resource accounting area.