Taxonomy of Talent Management

Background: Talents, Skills, And Competences

Marc Effron, a Talent-management consultant argued that 18% of companies in USA win their war for talent, but 72% of them admitted neither gain nor loose and the rest conceded defeat in this area (Anders, 2010). In Such situations, it was recommended to understand accurately, the thing that prompted us to scrutinize the concepts related to this area.

A human capital perspective implies that employees are assessed on their value (the potential to contribute to an organization's core competences) and uniqueness (the extent to which the employee is difficult to replace) (Lepak & Snell, 1999). Those employees who have skills that are high on value and uniqueness are identified as an organization's talented employees. High potentials are believed to “show potential to become something more than what they currently are” (Silzer & Church, 2009, p. 4) or more specifically, those employees who are “recognized, at that point in time, as the organization's likely future leaders” (Cope, 1998, p. 15). Where the concept ‘talent as human capital’ focuses on the specific desired skills (valuable and unique) for showing talent, the concept ‘high potential’ refers to a more general label, or in other words to the result of possessing such skills that are high on value and uniqueness.

We often witness an overlap in the definitions of three concepts considered as a fundamental dimension keys in the strategic and performance management of any competitive firm. Among these concepts, furthermore talent management, we found skills and competences management. Table 1 below represents an overview on some definitions of talents, skills and competences collected from different sources: