Linking Talent Management to Traditional and Boundaryless Career Orientations: Research Propositions and Future Directions

Published date01 March 2019
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12304
AuthorEmily T. Benson,Akram Al Ariss,Marian Crowley‐Henry
Date01 March 2019
Linking Talent Management to Traditional
and Boundaryless Career Orientations:
Research Propositions and Future Directions
MARIAN CROWLEY-HENRY,
1
EMILY T. BENSON
2
and AKRAM ALARISS
3
1
Maynooth University, Maynooth, Co Kildare, Ireland
2
Department of BusinessManagement, Keene State College, Keene, NH,USA
3
Toulouse Business School, Toulouse, France
Talent management (TM) is a growing fieldthat concentrates on optimizinghuman resources so that theyprovide
a sustained competitive advantage to organizations. While successful TM practices are widely understood to include
career development, the topics of careers and TM remain largely disconnected in the human resource management
(HRM) literature. In this conceptual paper, we review the traditional and boundaryless career literature from a
multi-level perspective, in order to theoretically develop TM, which to date has been consistently described as
under-theorized. We contend that consideration of the functioning of careers within and across individual, network,
organization, industry, occupation, and national/global structures is important when developing effective TM
practices. To further understand the relationship between careers and TM, this paper develops researchable
propositions for future studies, supported by the existing literature.
Keywords: talent management; career; career development; traditional career; boundaryless career; multi-level
Introduction
Talent management (TM) is a topic of increasing
academic interest (De Boeck et al., 2018; McDonnell
et al., 2017) despite persistent claims of conceptual
ambiguity (Lewis and Heckman, 2006; Meyers et al.,
2013; Vaiman and Collings, 2013; Dries, 2013a; Festing
and Schäfer, 2014) and under-theorization (Gallardo-
Gallardo et al., 2013, 2015; Thunnissen et al., 2013;
Gallardo-Galla rdo and Thunnissen, 2016). To develop
TM from its practitioner genesis (Michaels et al., 2001)
and move towardsa theorization of TM, some researchers
link TM with research on international mobility (for
example, Al Ariss et al., 2014; Cerdin and Brewster,
2014; Collings, 2014; Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss,
2016); others with research on careers (for example, Carr
et al., 2005; Iles et al., 2010; Dries et al., 2012; De Vos
and Dries, 2013). However, a comprehensive analysis
linking the relational structures affecting careers (Al Ariss
and Syed, 2011) to TM has not yet been performed. This
paper concentrates on this particular research gap.
Building on multi-level career literature concerning the
traditional and boundaryless career orientations, it
offers researchable propositions linking the relational
structures of careers to TM. A better understanding of
the roles of different structures and actors within and
across the career eco system, including the individual,
network, organization, industry, occupation, and country
levels, will aid the development of TM strategies and
practices in organizations and encourage the advancement
of theoretical links between career theory and TM.
TM describes an organizations identification of key
positions and, subsequently, the development and
retention of a talent pool to fill those positions (Collings
and Mellahi, 2009; Thunnissen et al., 2013). TM is
increasingly important to organizational leaders who are
attempting to maximize their business performance, with
the central assumption that it is essential to recruit,
develop, and retain topemployees in order to meet the
strategic business objectives of organizations (Tung,
2016; De Boeck et al., 2018). As Dries et al. (2012)
explain, however, assumptions about the best ways to
manage internal talent can conflict with contemporary
patterns of boundarylesscareers (Arthur, 1994; Bird,
Correspondence: Marian Crowley-Henry,Maynooth University, National
University of Ireland, Maynooth, Maynooth, Co Kildare, Ireland.Tel.:
+353 1 708 4756E-mail marian.crowleyhenry@mu.ie
European Management Review, Vol. 16, 519, (2019)
DOI: 10.1111/emre.12304
©2018 European Academy of Management

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