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ABSTRACT
Leadership development is a key aspect of talent management programs and processes in organizations. In a competitive business environment, organizations seek cost efficient ways to develop talent and are continually looking to identify leadership qualities that will help them focus energy on the right people. This article explores the diversity of opinion on leadership ability and how emotional maturity is intrinsic to leadership ability. A case study of talent management practices at Tesco Hindustan Service Center, Bangalore, corroborates this view.
Introduction
In the realm of Organizational Behaviour (OB), the subject of 'Talent Management' has received considerable research attention in recent years. This phenomenon has been primarily due to a highly competitive business environment characterized by shrinking product life cycles, multitude of products and services available in the market, increasing product differentiation, adoption of competitive marketing strategies, etc. The only way that organizations can survive such cut-throat competition is through the attainment of 'competitive advantage' (Barney, 1991; Iles, 1997; Tucker, Kao & Verma, 2005) that is crucially dependent on the quality of an organization's leadership ability, which has led to a virtual "war for talent" (Axelrod et al., 2001). In fact, the CEOs and the senior leadership of organizations now spend considerable portion of their time in identifying and managing talent - the future leaders for their organizations (Martin & Schmidt, 2010; Stahl et al., 2012; Conaty & Charan, 2011). Talent is believed to provide the 'strategic advantage' (Becker & Huselid, 1998, 2006; Gelens et al., 2013), and the ability to use human talent - attracting, finding, motivating, energizing and retaining - is the key to an organization's success, and to achieving the organization's goal (Cheese et al., 2008).
Organization theorists have provided many definitions of talent and talent management adding to the 'richness' of the subject that must not only be 'appreciated and nurtured' (Boudreau, 2013) but also 'embraced' differentially to suit situations and context (Gelens et al., 2013; McDonnell, Collings & Burgess, 2012; Tansley, Kirk & Tietze, 2013; Thunnissen et al., 2013). Many organizations are often confused and do not know how to go about managing talent (Conaty & Charan, 2011). Organizations need to decide whether they should develop everyone (Stahl et al., 2012; Buckingham & Vosburgh, 2001; Walker & Larocco,...