Troubling some assumptions: A response to "The role of perceived organziational justice in shaping the outcomes of talent management: a research agenda"

This Commentary is a response to the paper by Gelens, Dries, Hofmans, & Pepermans in this Special Issue on the development of a theoretical framework for talent management. The authors' central argument and hypotheses remain essentially untroubled here as this Commentary instead problematizes a central assumption of their paper which is commonly taken for granted in the talent literature—i.e., that talent is in shortage. In addition, suggestions for theory development are given and a more critical approach to the assumptions upon which talent management is based is advocated

A Capability Approach to talent management

This paper takes a fresh and radical look at organisational talent management strategies. It offers a critique of some of the prevalent assumptions underpinning certain talent management practices, in particular those fuelled by the narratives of scarcity and metaphors of war. We argue that talent management programmes based on these assumptions ignore important social and ethical dimensions, to the detriment of both organizations and individuals. We offer instead a set of principles proceeding from and informed by Sen’s Capability Approach. Based on the idea of freedoms not resources, the Approach circumvents discourses of scarcity and restores vital social and ethical considerations to ideas about talent management. We also emphasise its versatility and sensitivity to the particular circumstances of individual organisations such that corporate leaders and human resource practitioners might use the principles for a number of practical purposes

Talent Management and the Talent of Management

The topic that I have chosen to talk about, managing talent, is one that is exercising the minds of organizations, large and small, domestic and global, because it connects very strongly to their concerns, if they are privately owned about being competitive or, if they are public bodies, about providing pubic value

Problematising the ‘war for talent’: using Sen’s Capability Approach as a new framework for thinking about talent management

This article uses Sen’s Capability Approach primarily to conceptualise an evaluative framework for organizational talent management strategies but also to suggest a more human basis for identifying and recognising talent. Challenges presented by the Capability Approach to organizations in relation to workforce development are elaborated and are used to frame the development of a set of principles and questions that corporate leaders and human resource practitioners can use to evaluate proposed or existing talent programmes from a practical and ethical standpoint. The article provides an early contribution to the social and ethical evaluation of talent programmes and provides a basis for new theorizing in the field

Medieval Northamptonshire: the 1301 Assessment for a Fifteenth

This article provides a summary description of a transcript of the 1301 lay subsidy produced for the Northamptonshire Record Office. The surviving subsidy roll covers about half of the county and the article gives information on the number of taxpayers, valuations by town and village, occupations and personal names. The roll provides a rare insight into Northamptonshire in the early fourteenth century

The Lost Boys of Wellingborough: Remembering those who fell in the Great War

This article is the outcome of a project to identify all 677 names listed on the Great War memorial in Wellingborough. The article first identifies the various memorials placed in the town after the war before giving an analysis of casualties derived from service records and local newspapers. Extracts from soldiers' letters home are given. Omissions and mistakes on the memorial are identified. The article attempts to portray the impact of the losses on the town

The significance of unforeseen events in organisational ethnographic inquiry

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance for the practicing ethnographer of responding to unforeseen events that occur during periods of data collection. Analysis of four unforeseen events occurring during prolonged periods of study amongst workplace cleaners is undertaken and the changes in researcher acceptance resulting from the outcomes of these events are reported. This article shows how awareness of the possible incidence of unforeseen events and the ability to carefully yet spontaneously manage the ethnographer’s reaction to them can substantially influence the degree of acceptance achieved by the observer within the group under study. Though the need for an ethnographer to get close to the participants in a study is well documented, detailed examples as described in this article are rare. The documentation of the nature and effects of such episodes and how they unfold serves to enhance the credibility of the research