Talent Management in the Developing World – Adopting a Global Perspective

Citation

Walker, D.H.T. and Mundi Scholar, E. (2011), "Talent Management in the Developing World – Adopting a Global Perspective", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 534-535. https://doi.org/10.1108/17538371111144229

This book is a very useful PM practitioner‐oriented book that would also be valued by PM scholars with an interest in program management and more specifically leading teams and managing expatriate staff. Presently, I do not see this as a necessary core book for any specific course but it would be useful as a reference book and for university libraries to keep several copies and for organisations that operate globally it would be very useful.

It is an easy book to read and is accessible in its style. It could fit with studies in human resource management (HRM) for project managers or in a leadership course. It is interesting that the author has an African background so it is refreshing to read a book like this from the perspective of somebody who has intimate knowledge of advanced as well as less developed economies. I found some interesting insights in this book that I might not have accessed before.

The book comprises 12 chapters, the last being a case study chapter. Chapter 1 introduces the challenge of talent management from a global perspective, not just working globally but competing for talented employees globally. It sets the scene well.

Chapter 2 argues for the need for a paradigm shift in HRM issues as well as leadership given the global nature of many organisations in their operation of sources of employees. They present a useful Table 2.1 presenting their paradigm shift that may be citable by students in this area. They briefly discuss national culture but not in depth, I would have preferred to see some deeper reference to studies such as GLOBE (House et al., 2002) or other studies in culture beyond the usual Hofstede (1991). That said, it is an accessible introduction, particularly for practitioners.

Chapter 3 discusses strategies for hiring talent. It is a useful summary for those needing an introduction to the subject without reading a whole textbook on this one area. Chapter 4 follows with a guide to talent selection which hold few surprises in terms of anything new but is does have a very useful table about demonstrative integrity as a competency model for a managerial position and this is a welcomed addition to the usual listed competencies for project managers. Chapter 5 follows on logically with content around engaging talent. It has a short section on work‐life balance for example and that has been more extensively written about in a construction project management context (Lingard and Francis, 2009) and so it is a very topical issue. Chapter 6 is devoted to getting the best out of talent and touches on coaching, performance feedback and counselling employees about their career advancement with an interesting and relevant Chapter 7 on differentiating between talent and their performance and potential. Succession planning and management is covered in Chapter 8 which is followed by Chapter 9 on developing talent for business leadership. Again with most of these chapters, the content is relevant, mainly overview and therefore lacking depth but at the same time is very useful for those that have HRM “thrust upon them” and may not where to start because many of the important issues are at least introduced here. Chapters 10 relates to making talent management effective and is a short chapter with a fair part of it about managing non‐performance which seemed a little unlikely given “talent” infers high performance and what I felt missing about this chapter and throughout the book was that it seems to miss out on stressing the importance of an organisation's “systemic” or cultural ethos and how that impinges on the way that talent is treated in firms.

Chapter 10 discusses the role of the HRM function in a context of organisations with global reach. What was disappointing was that this is perhaps the shortest chapter in the book and so belies its title a little. Chapter 12 provides a case study to add some tangible feel to the text.

Overall, I was left with the impression that if I were a project manager that was suddenly told that I had to be responsible for a lot of HRM functions as part of the trend towards decentralisation of HRM these days, I would welcome this book as a primer. At least I would know what to look further for and so this book is a useful reference source. I was disappointed that the whole area of ex‐patriot working and managing expats is a growing area, indeed I had seen several interesting paper submissions on this vary topic to this journal and which are under various stages of review. I also appreciate that often there is need for a primer type book to enter a discipline such as PM that sets the scene and this does that job well. I would recommend it as a reference source, a good primer, especially for the many Masters‐level students of PM, but it is very lightweight for those who are more deeply engaged with research in this area.