LITERATURE REVIEW: CONCEPTS
2.6 Perspectives on Talent Management
2.6.1 Exclusive Versus Inclusive Perspective
The crux of this perspective is whether TM should be regarded as holistic or narrow in an organisation. The exclusive perspective takes a narrow view and concentrates on specific individuals in an organisation called ―talented,‖ ―eagles,‖
―superstars,‖ ―A players,‖ ―high flyers,‖ ―top performers,‖ ―exceptional‘ performers‖
―the best of class,‖ and ―super keepers.‖ For instance, Morton (2005) describes talents as those that have the competence to make a momentous difference to the present and future performance of the organisation. Supporting this position, Tansley et al. (2007: 8) posit that talents are ―those individuals who can make a difference to organisational performance, either through their immediate contribution or in the longer-term by demonstrating the highest levels of potential.‖
The exclusive advocates are of the view that it is impossible for everybody in the organisation to be considered as talent and that talented individuals are fundamentally different from the others with respect to their current and past performance, competence, and potential (Iles et al., 2010). The exclusive perspective is founded on the principle of workforce segmentation and understands talents as an
elite subset of the organisation‘s population (Berger and Berger, 2004; Boudreau and Ramstad, 2005; Collings and Mellahi, 2009; Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2013; Minbaeva and Collings, 2013). Berger and Berger (2004: 5) argued that ―super keepers are a very small group of individuals, who have demonstrated higher accomplishments, have stimulated others to attain superior accomplishments and who exemplify the core competencies and values of the organisation.‖ Advocates of this approach even agree that there are certain percentages of the organisational workforce that can be considered as talent.
Some studies have placed the threshold for being considered an ―exceptional performer‖ at belonging to the top ten percent (10%) of age peers in one‘s specific area of expertise (Gagne, 2004; Ulrich and Smallwood, 2012). Some segment their employees into categories ―A‖ [top 10-20 percent], ―B‖ [middle 70 percent] and ―C‖
[the lowest 10-20 percent] (Larson and Richburg, 2004). Segmentation is fundamental to TM (Berger and Berger, 2004; Minbaeva and Collings, 2013) and Ledford and Kochanski (2004: 217) have claimed that ―successful organisations tend to have a dominant talent segment, while their weaker peers have a bit of everything.‖ Hence, Swailes (2013a) argued that TM concentrates on a pool of high-potential employees possessing rare skills that are valued by the organisation.
In contrast, the inclusive perspective is of the view that fundamentally everyone in the organisation has ―talent;‖ the task is to manage all employees to deliver high performance (Iles et al., 2010). As a result this approach is broad and mostly viewed as ―whole workforce,‖ ―broad based,‖ ―egalitarian,‖ ―strength based,‖
and ―all hands on desk.‖ This is based on the assumption that ideally, all employees in an organisation have a role to play and can contribute something. For instance, Buckingham and Vosburgh (2001: 17-18) claimed that ―talent is inherent in each person, to be successful in the future we must reinstate our focus on the distinctive talents of every individual employee and on the right way to convert these talents into lasting performance.‖
Similarly, Ashton and Morton (2005: 30) argued that the aim of TM is to yield and boost performance among all levels in the workforce by allowing everyone to reach his/her potential, no matter what that might be. Therefore, TM should be broad by recognising that everyone has the capacity and potential to demonstrate talent and
that everyone must go through the same talent identification process (Stainton, 2005).
O‘Reilly and Pfeffer (2000: 50) maintained that organisational performance stems from ―capturing the value of the entire workforce, not just a few superstars,‖ while Peters (2006) posited that there is no reason not to consider each employee as talented.
This goes to support the popular notion that organisations cannot succeed without their people (Tulgan, 2001) and that in today‘s competitive business world, it is fundamentally employees and not technology, factories or capital that are believed to create value for the firm (Crain, 2009). Gallardo-Gallardo et al. (2013) maintained that this broad perspective of understanding TM could be justified in those organisations where the whole business revolves around the people they employ, particularly in service firms such as hotels and innovation and consulting firms. In these kind of organisations every employee counts, whether in the frontline or behind the scenes. As a result, Yeung (2006: 268) states that ―service comes only from people.‖
The difficulty here is that when TM concentrates on everyone in the organisation, then there appears to be no difference between TM and HRM. In this way TM tends to be a collection of HRM practices and this will make TM a re- branding exercise or what is called ―new wine in an old bottle‖ (Lewis and Heckman, 2006; Iles et al., 2010) and will make it difficult to understand the strategic and effective management of talents (Lewis and Heckman, 2006). A holistic approach to TM appears to be relatively rare in practice (Clarke and Winkler, 2006; Swailes, 2013a). However, its supporters argue that ―an inclusive TM strategy is a competitive necessity‖ (Warren, 2006: 25).
There is no doubt that every employee counts and contributes to the overall performance of the organisation, but it is also a fact that some employees contribute more and do have rare skills that are more critical to the survival of the organisation than others. Again, it is also a fact that some positions are strategic and contribute more to the achievement of organisational goals than others (Berger and Berger, 2004; Boudreau and Ramstad, 2005; Collings and Mellahi, 2009; Minbaeva and Collings, 2013). While not downplaying on the importance of every employee, there are a number of reasons why exclusive TM appears to be more practical than the inclusive perspective.
First, not all position can be filled with ―A players.‖ This is supported by Huselid, Beatty, and Becker (2005), who argued that firms cannot afford to have ―A players‖ in all positions. Second, adopting an inclusive perspective results in over investment in non-strategic positions. For instance, Minbaeva and Collings (2013:
1766) have argued that ―resources are wasted when a star performer is in a position with little potential for differentiation between an average and a top performer.‖
Hence, they prefer differentiation not just in performance but also according to position. The third is the difficulty in recruiting and retaining talents. Based on this TM appears to be more exclusive than exclusive in practice. In this study TM takes a more exclusive than an inclusive view.