Abstract
The chapter builds on a conceptual and theoretical understanding of talent management. It documents the notions and essence of talent management in modern organizations, especially in modern knowledge-based organizations, and frames a theoretical framework for talent management at present. It explains the fundamental link between talent management and human capital theory and answers three featured questions: Why is talent management so crucial in 21st-century organizations? How can talent strategy be reinvented to support digitalization? What are the changing landscape and evolving concerns of talent management and their implications for knowledge organizations in the post-pandemic paradigm?
TopMethod And Timeframe
The paper employs a qualitative-focused synthesis research method while heavily based on a literature review.
Contemporary development of synthesis methods for qualitative research is seminal and has encompassed diverse custom-made approaches, e.g., meta-ethnography, grounded theory, thematic synthesis, textual narrative synthesis, meta-study, meta-synthesis, meta-narrative, critical interpretive synthesis, focused synthesis, ecological triangulation, framework synthesis, and “fledgling” approaches. (Talukdar et al., 2021:4).
However, this current study has applied a tailor-made qualitative focused synthesis method that implies collecting and documenting information and data from various sources, including literature review and participant observations (See “focused synthesis” in Talukdar, 2012, 2020, 2021).
The authors designed the study in December 2021, reviewed literature and collected data in January 2022, assessed the reviewed material and findings in February 2022, and thus, prepared the chapter.
TopConceptual Understanding
Peter Drucker reckoned a major world transformation, from capitalism to a knowledge-based society, was underway in the early 1990s. This transformation was examined in terms of how it would have affected society, how it would have affected economics, business, and politics, and how the dynamics of capitalist society, including capital, land, and labor, would have become subservient to a knowledge-based society.
Drucker predicted in 1993 that the post-capitalist world would become neither socialist nor capitalist. The market norms of capitalism would have survived, but society would have become a society of specialized organizations. In the early twenty-first century, Drucker's 1993 assumption, outlined in his “Post-Capitalist Society,” one of the most widely read and influential books of the time, became a reality.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Impact Leadership: Impact leadership is a leadership style that leverages talent leadership in the convergence of technology, innovation, impact investment, and committed culture to impact development, co-creation, networking, public-private partnerships, and valuation in emerging markets concerning the future sustainable growth of the organization and the wider context of the environment, society, and inclusive economies.
Knowledge Organizations: A knowledge organization is simply a knowledge generation and transformation and evidence-based policy influence firm. In such a firm, one group is known as knowledge workers, who develop original knowledge and transform it through seminars, symposiums, conferences, and/or teaching classes and influence national as well as international governance and development policies through research-based policy inputs. The other group serves as a service team that encapsulates, preserves, and archives generated knowledge; enables information communication technology to distribute and reuse the firm’s generated knowledge; and supports the knowledge transformation and policy influence process. A knowledge organization is a learning organization, but not all learning organizations are necessarily knowledge organizations.
Competitive advantage: A competitive advantage is defined as the ability of a business entity to serve or produce something in a preferred manner and more effectively than competitors, resulting in higher brand value and profit margins.
Value Creation: Value creation to date means turning the organization's resources into the capital to generate sustained results that add value to the key stakeholders of the organization, including shareholders, investors, general workforce, talent pool, talent leaders, and HR business partners. It also raises concerns about the sustainable development of the organization and its underlying impact on the external environment, society, and economies.
Human Capital: Human capital is a combination of the experience, attitude, capability, and competence of the people of an organization in navigating the portfolio with technology, intelligence, innovation, and future orientation to build brand value.
Theoretical Framework: A theoretical framework is a set of connected concepts and theories that a researcher frames into a structure to inform the research problem aligned with the theoretical basis and to compel the research findings in support or contrast of the dominant theory in the framework.