B.G.M. Fruytier

A review of talent management: ‘infancy or adolescence?’

The aim of this paper is to provide a critical review of the academic literature on talent management in search of alternative perspectives. We found three dominant themes: the exploration of the concept of talent (definitions), the intended outcomes or effects of talent management and talent management practices. These themes are explored in more detail, and we discuss possible limitations of the current points of view on talent management. Our main finding was that the current talent management literature has a too narrow and one-dimensional approach. It can be characterized as managerialist and unitarist and has a limited view of the practices and activities of human resources. To broaden this view to a more balanced or pluralistic approach to talent management, we added new perspectives, such as stakeholder theory, multiple goals and an extended consideration of practices. The new perspectives are not only valuable for the development of the field of talent management in general but also essential for a broader theoretical framework for talent management in different contexts.

Ordering disorders; linking organization design and knowledge integration

Studies addressing the connections between knowledge and organization structures can be divided into two classes. One class holds that a perspective on knowledge signals shortcomings of classical design principles and calls for flatter hierarchy and less specification of the production structure. Another class maintains that a knowledge perspective on organizations is at odds with any design perspective, whether classical or not, because the emergent, thoroughly social and practice-based nature of knowledge as knowing in action makes knowledge a useless and even dangerous beacon to designers: ex ante, knowledge is said to be fundamentally indeterminate and any attempt to ‘structure around knowledge’ may effectively drive out knowledge. To explore differences and possible bridges between these two calls of studies, the paper explores how both elements of the equation, organization structure and organizational knowledge, are to be conceived to ensure a meaningful connection between them. It is argued that the grouping focus in both defines the meeting place of organization structures and organizational knowledge, but shows that the involved knowledge and grouping concepts are not mutually compatible. It leads to a view where organization structures are seen as the ‘seeding’ background for knowledge integration processes that, in turn, constitute the patterns of work relationships envisioned in the designers organizational decomposition and grouping. For illustration purposes, the paper presents the example of the Max Planck Institute that describes one possible way through the conceptual model presented in the paper.

Organising R&D in Globalised Context: Convergence or Divergence? The Relative Influence of Dutch and Foreign Cultures on the Organisational Structure of R&D in Multinational Corporations

This paper examines national culture as an explanatory variable in the convergence versus divergence debate of RD Donaldson 2001; De Sitter 1998; Tidd et al. 2001) and includes the conceptual frameworks by Hofstede for analysing cultural diversity, complemented by contributions to the convergence-divergence debate (Ferner 1997; Harzing/Sorge 2003).