Smart Talent Management: Building Knowledge Assets for Competitive Advantage

Citation

Collings, D. (2010), "Smart Talent Management: Building Knowledge Assets for Competitive Advantage", Personnel Review, Vol. 39 No. 3, pp. 397-399. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483481011030566

The topic of talent management has become a key area of interest for practitioners and academics alike over the past decade. Smart Talent Management represents a welcome addition to the emerging academic literature in this area. In the introduction Vlad Vaiman and Charles Vance define smart talent management as “the combined use of the distinctly different concepts of knowledge management and talent management to resolve human performance problems and to achieve organizational objectives” (p. 1). The essence of the thesis put forward is that the extant literature on knowledge management has underplayed the role of talent management (in the form of training, knowledge sharing, knowledge sharing and the like) in effective knowledge management‐ while equally, the particular challenge of HRM in knowledge intensive industries has been insufficiently covered in the HRM literature. Their aim is quite ambitious to “take talent management to a more strategic level” (p. 6) with knowledge management providing a common unifying purpose and integrating HRM policies and practices more effectively. They also aim to contribute to the knowledge management literature through building on the traditional focus on hardware and software applications.

Given that a key critique of much of the literature on talent management has been a lack of theoretical sophistication (see Collings and Mellahi, 2009; Lewis and Heckman, 2006), any attempt to build the theoretical foundations of the topic is to be welcomed and Vaiman and Vance make a convincing case for the potential of knowledge management in this regard. If one were to be critical it may be with regard to the requirement for a new term “smart talent management”. Given that there is already much debate around the meaning and definition of the concept of talent management, the addition of yet another iteration of the term is questionable. Nonetheless, this is a minor quibble and the potential value of utilising knowledge management as a theoretical frame to advance our understanding of talent management far outweighs the negatives in this regard.

The book is structured around four distinct sections. Section one focuses on HR planning and staffing and contains three chapters. The stand out chapter in this section is Lengnick‐Hall and Andrade's contribution on talent staffing systems for effective knowledge management. Indeed, this is the chapter in which the potential contribution of integrating knowledge management and talent management is most strongly demonstrated in the entire text. They provide a very clear and developed argument around the role of talent staffing systems in maximising organisation's ability to compete through their knowledge assets. The chapter also explores in depth the issues of codifying knowledge and the knowledge issues surrounding employee hiring and turnover. In the other chapters in this section, Patrick Schutz and Donald Carpenter consider the interaction of talent management and knowledge management in HR planning, while Siri Terjesen and Regina‐Viola Frey explore the key issues around attracting and retaining generation Y knowledge workers.

Section two moves on to consider training and coaching. In this section, Rob Poell and Fred Van der Krogt explore the role of social networks in managing talent, knowledge and learning. The second two chapters in this section may be of more interest to practitioners. In this regard, Ans de Vos and Nele Soens outline the role of career counselling in the context of talent and knowledge management while Konstantin Korotov considers the issue of accelerated development of organisational talent. The latter engages with some important debates which organisations face in deciding to fast track high potential employees.

The two chapters in section three focus on performance management. Nancy Inskeep and Bertie Hall consider the role of reward and recognition in supporting talent and knowledge management initiatives. Patrick Schutz and Donald Carpenter focus on the interface between talent, performance and knowledge management. They provide some clear insights into how knowledge management techniques could decrease the subjectivity and ambiguity of traditional performance management techniques.

The final section of the volume focuses on organizational learning and development. In the first of the three chapters in this section Denis Briscoe considers talent management in the context of the global learning organization. In the penultimate contribution Rhonda Jones identifies social capital as the linking pin between talent management and knowledge management. She emphasises the role of social interaction in creating and sharing knowledge. In the final chapter, Jim Graber and William Rothwell put forward a model for systematizing, managing and improving the knowledge of the organization's human talent in terms of knowledge/skill acquisition and transfer.

On balance the editors have done a good job of bringing together a series of contributions which provide a useful and welcome expansion of the theoretical foundations of talent management through a knowledge management lens. However it is fair to say that in a small number of the chapters the integration of the knowledge management literature is somewhat tangential and feels a little forced. Nonetheless, the linkage is clearly evident in most of the contributions. The book will be of interest to academics and practitioners alike. Academics may draw on the contributions to help to frame their studies of talent management as the field continues to evolve. Practitioners on the other hand will take useful insights into some of the practical challenges of managing talent in the context of knowledge employees and knowledge management.

In conclusion, Smart Talent Management highlights the challenges that organisations face in breaking down the disciplinary boundaries between talent and knowledge functions and provides real insights into how researcher and practitioners alike can help break down these barriers. Indeed, a recent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (2006) concluded that talent management was too important to be left to HR alone and this certainly resonates with the challenges identified in this volume. To be truly effective talent management requires buy in and involvement of a range of stakeholders in organisations. Smart Talent Management makes a convincing argument for the role which knowledge management specialists can make in this regard.