The Value of Talent Management: Rethinking practice, problems and possibilities

This industrial PhD is about talent management. More specifically, it is about how the customer relationship becomes a source of value and value creation for the company through the practice of talent management, a key strategic HR initiative. Talent management is a costly activity in terms of both time and money. Nevertheless, talent management is an HR practice that is virtually taken for granted in any company of a certain size. This is the case because it is assumed to be a value-adding initiative and believed to be a key strategic HR initiative, in particular for large global organisations, to remain competitive. This dissertation suggests that talent management practices are not necessarily as value-adding as is the long-standing assumption, and thus challenges prevailing notions of what constitutes valuable talent management. It argues the need to rethink the practice of talent management to ensure that it adds a level of value that justifies the amount of attention and resources spent on it. The dissertation examines what the implications are for talent management when a company introduces a customer focus as a way of competing in the market. In order to examine this, the dissertation brings the concept of value into the discussion of talent management and thus invites new ways of connecting the various dots of talent management – both within the HR function and in the interaction between HR, the business and the customers. Value is a complex concept, and in the management literature (including the literature on talent management), the concept is often addressed in a narrow economic sense based on an industrial logic. The strategic management literature has increasingly focused on value in a relational sense, which alters ways of doing successful business. The dissertation argues that when a company perceives customer relations as a potential source of competitive advantages, this has implications for notions of value and value creation in the organisation, including the practice of talent management. This requires a relational perspective on value and value creation, which implies that value becomes both more difficult to control and more complex and embedded in a system of multiple, mutually dependent factors.