The Many Faces of Talent Management: Organizational Perspectives on Talent and Talent Management Practices in Jordan

Talent management involves the systematic planning, acquisition, development, performance management, engagement, and retention of employees identified as "talent." Little is known about the relationship between organizations' talent perspectives and talent management practices. This paper addresses this gap by conducting in-depth semistructured interviews with 33 talent managers and executives from 26 organizations across financial, industrial and services industries in Jordan. Using an abductive thematic analysis process, based on the literature and interview data, three major themes were identified (i) talent perspectives (ii) talent management practices, and (iii) the relationship between talent perspectives and talent management practices. Moreover, through this process, seven continua of talent perspectives and six areas of talent management practices were identified as subthemes to the first two major themes. The analysis produced new themes including structures of TM practices, factors that change the nature of the relationship between talent perspectives and TM practices and contextual factors in Jordan. We found that embracing a specific talent perspective leads to a greater focus on talent management practices and influences the way practices are designed. Moreover, biases toward individuals' identities, maturity of the organization, organizational strategy, and personality of talent managers and executives can change the nature of the relationship between talent perspectives and talent management practices. We propose three approaches to talent management: the pragmatic approach, personality approach, and scarcity-based approach. Three propositions were provided to hypothesize various combinations of talent perspectives, TM practices, and structures of TM practices. We also discuss future research directions and practical implications of the findings.