INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT

International Management



International Management

Section 1

In the given article, author provides in-depth company-level insight into the talent management of western development in China, with a specific focus on internal talent pools. In particular, the paper aims to answer the following two research questions: How does western development in China identify, develop and retain talented employees? Do institutional and/or cultural influences lead to the adaptation of talent management practice to the focal subsidiary in China? The paper is structured as follows. The next section reviews previous literature on talent management and endeavours to clarify the concept of talent management.

The introductory sections examine the nature of OD and the philosophy that has traditionally underpinned it. Later sections of the chapter pursue these themes in more depth by exploring (a) a variety of techniques that have traditionally been closely associated with OD, (b) ways in which OD has evolved over recent years, and (c) challenges that currently face those working in the field. “Organization development” (OD) is an ambiguous phrase associated with the theory and practice of change management in organizations. For reasons explained in this chapter, OD is difficult to define. The phrase OD certainly means different things to different people. This lack of a standard definition can be particularly confusing to those who are new to the subject (Thomas, 1996, 102).

However, early in this introduction, it may be helpful to highlight that, in recent years; the practice of OD has become more closely associated with disciplines such as human resource management (HRM) and human resource development (HRD). One indication of these links between OD, HRM, and HRD is that in countries such as the China and the United Kingdom organizations regularly advertise for full-time OD practitioners in HR professional journals.

Organization development (OD) features prominently in organizational change management theory and practice. Early forms of OD emanated from the China approximately 50 years ago and since then OD has been widely applied in organizational settings across the world including in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. The content of the chapter is structured as follows. At the outset, it should be documented that the sources of the saying OD are tough to isolate. The period OD likely appeared simultaneously in two or three places. This non-attendance of an apparently identifiable origin theorist of OD may assist to interpret why there is no benchmark or universal definition. Similarly, it is unrealistic to pinpoint the designated day on which OD was presented to the world, though the work of influential OD theorists for example Lewin, Likert, Lippitt, and Beckhard tended to appear in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. However, while the sources of the period OD are rather unclear, there seems to be an agreement surrounding its general aims; that is, as the mark proposes, OD is about evolving associations and persons through the use of mindfully designed change-management interventions (Yang, 2005, 97).

Despite the need of a unanimously acknowledged delineation of OD, readers may find it cooperative to be supplied with two often-quoted ...