CULTURE IN TALENT MANAGEMENT AND MOBILITY

Cultural considerations in Talent Management and mobility in Global Organization

Cultural considerations in Talent Management and mobility in Global Organization

Introduction

Most modern-day managers would quickly agree that the shared values, attitudes, commitments, beliefs, and overall patterns of thinking socially constructed among members of an organization have a tremendous influence on its long-term effectiveness and performance. The impact of an appropriate organizational culture on the well-being of the business organization has been explicitly recognized by many organizational researchers (Dennison, 1984; Camerer and Vespalian, 1988; and Wilkins and Ouchi, 1983).

Tunstall (1986) proposes that a company's culture is the amalgam of shared values, behavior patterns, mores, symbols, attitudes, and normative ways of conducting business that, more than its products or services, differentiate it from all other companies. Further, culture may influence what organizational strategies are selected and whether they are successful (Cartwright and Cooper, 1993; Marcoulides and Heck, 1993; Wilkins and Dyer, 1988). Existing cultural orientations may be quite supportive of the mission and success of a firm at a particular point, but not at all appropriate when significant strategic talent becomes necessary. This paper addresses the need for cultural evaluation, feedback, and possible talent facilitation as needed to successfully align with necessarily imposed strategic talent.

Culture has traditionally been recognized as a consideration in the strategy implementation process (Bourgeois and Brodwin, 1984; Nutt, 1986; Galbraith and Kazanjian, 1986). Culture is assumed to explain the success of some organizations (Peters and Waterman, 1982), to represent an essential element in effectiveness of organizations if it fits the strategy (Schwartz and Davis, 1981), to act as a determinant of strategy (Ackerman, 1982), or as an influence on the implementation of strategic decisions (Schwartz and Davis, 1981). Such claims contribute to the recognition that culture plays a large role in the overall implementation of strategy. As such, culture must play a critical role when dramatic, significant strategic talent is mandated.

Though culture talent has been considered broadly as part of an overall implementation effort, little conceptual literature to date has presented an integrative literature review and synthesis of the cultural variables which impact the implementation of sizable strategic talent. It is this paper's objective to address cultural aspects in some depth in order to make evaluation, derive feedback, and facilitate cultural talent as needed for achieving fit to strategy. To this end, the model proposed recognizes cultural impact on strategic implementation and assumes that alignment of culture to strategy is essential for overall organizational effectiveness.

Aspects of Culture

As the nature of work changes, with more collaborative, cross-boundary working and more global and virtual working, models of leadership are also shifting. So talent programs have to flex to accommodate new organizational needs and new approaches to organizational and individual development.

A final reason that the talent program should be tied to organizational strategy is that the attainment of strategic goals will dictate the pace of employees' development. Knowing what it wants to accomplish will help an organization decide whether it should ...