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Mapping talent development: definition, scope and architecture
Edited by Thomas N. Garavan, Ronan Carbery and Andrew Rock
Introduction
Talent management is increasingly discussed in the HRM and HRD literature ([93] Stahl et al. , 2007; [21] Collings et al. , 2011). It is a set of practices that are implemented in organisations ([17] CIPD, 2011; [73] McDonnell et al. , 2010), and refers to how organisations attract, select, develop and manage employees in an integrated and strategic way ([89] Scullion and Collings, 2011). Talent development represents an important component of the overall talent management process ([76] Novations, 2009, [13] Cappelli, 2009). While it is possible for organisations to pursue a strategy that focuses on talent acquisition from the external labour market, such a strategy is unlikely to be successful in the long term. It is well established that there are significant advantages to be gained from an internal development approach and that organisations need to acquire and develop industry - and firm-specific knowledge and skills ([61] Lepak and Snell, 1999) in order to be competitive. As a consequence, organisations are likely to make significant investments in talent development activities, so that talented employees possess the competencies to successfully implement business strategy. Talent development activities are typically undertaken by organisations to ensure that there are zero talent outages, to ensure planned succession rather than replacement, and to enhance the organisations' reputation as a talent magnet ([37] Gandz, 2006).
There are relatively few academic papers that focus primarily on talent development. It is with this intention that this special issue was proposed. We sought to ensure that the parameters of the special issue were sufficiently broad to encourage a diversity of submissions. The majority of papers submitted discussed talent development from a European perspective and focused on a particular talent development initiative or dimension of the talent management architecture. It is our hope that through the empirical insights gained from the various papers, we will shed some light on the issues involved in talent development and the challenges encountered in implementing talent development in organisations.
In this paper we set the scene for the special issue by considering the scope of talent development within a wider talent management strategy, the issues to be addressed and the implications...