GSTF International Journal on Media & Communications(JMC) Vol.1 No.1, March 2013
Talent Management Practices: The Case of
Companies in Thailand
Punnee Pimapunsri, Ph.D
Abstract – Talent management has always been topic
of interest among both practitioners and academics in
term of its concept and practices. The purpose of this
paper is to expose how practitioners in Thailand
define the term talent management and what are
talent management practices used by companies.
Thirteen companies in the Eastern region of Thailand
were selected as the study sample. The result shows
that there are two approaches used in participating
companies’ talent management program. One focuses
on individual and another focuses on individual’s
talents. And there is a thin line between existing
human resource activities and activities apply in
talent management program.
strategy that is not limited to within a country
anymore, the focus is on global context. In the past,
organizations considered low labor cost and raw
material as key factors for consideration in
choosing a country for investment. Beside the cost,
pool of talent people is a crucial factor taking into
consideration when making location decision [6].
The trend is heading towards where talented people
are.
Puvitayaphan [7] conducted a case study
to inspect the rationales for implementing talent
management practice and investigate the key
functions of the talent management practices and to
identify the key success factors of talent
management practices among six Stock Exchange
of Thailand (SET)-listed companies. She found that
Thai executive understand the value and benefits of
having a pool of talented people but the talent’s and
non-talent’s competency required is not clearly
identified. Six of the participated companies
perceive that talented people acquired their talents
within the organization. There are still few
companies in Thailand implementing talent
management program as well as there is lack of
talent management framework, concepts, and
methodology in Thai context. Puvitayaphan is not
alone in making this remark, there are several
researchers indicated the lack of clear meaning of
the term talent management [8][9]. Collings and
Mellahi [9] conducted a study on strategic talent
management and stated that talent management is
poorly defined and lack in theoretical foundation
that they concluded that current body of literature
of talent management is still in the infant stage.
Therefore, this study aims to investigate
talent management practices, in addition the
investigation of the meaning of the term “talent”,
defined or understood by human resource managers
or those who are directly involved with talent
management program in each company, is also
conducted. Problems arise from the implementation
of talent management program will also be
identified. It is expected that the result of the study
help to reveal company’s concept and practice of
talent management program to serve as a piece
literature of current talent management practices in
Thai context.
Index Terms – Talent management, Succession
Planning, Human Resource Management
I.
INTRODUCTION
Organizations throughout the world are
facing with intense competition due to rapid
changes, elimination of industry and country
boundaries, increased technological innovation,
shorten-product lifecycles, and an unpredictable
market, as the result of globalization. Competition
is not only for the market share but also for skilled
workers and employees with outstanding
performance. Researchers and practitioners are
trying their best to develop survival methods in
today’s business situation. Many businesses place
much importance on human resources regarding
recruitment, selection, development and retention.
There have been attempts to link talent
management and business outcome such as
employee engagement, employee retention, as well
as improving firms’ competitive advantage [1] [2]
[3]. Silzer and Dowell [4] reported the link of talent
and business outcome by providing example of a
comparison between best and worst plant manager
in manufacturing company. While best plant
manager was able to increase profits by 130
percent, worst plant manager brought no
improvement to the company. In 2000, McKinsey
investigate the impact of global talent management
practices and found that there was significant
relationship
between
company’s
global
management score on company’s financial
performance [5].
The lower country boundary has created
flow of business and organizations’ location
II. TALENT MANAGEMENT
Existing talent management literature
demonstrates different approaches researchers and
DOI: 10.5176/2251-2853_2.2.108
37
© 2013 GSTF
GSTF International Journal on Media & Communications(JMC) Vol.1 No.1, March 2013
practitioners used in defining this term. Some
defined talent management by focusing on
activities used in talent management [10], who
talented employees are, and their performance
levels [11] or by positions that critical to
organization success in crating competitive
advantage [9].
Lewis and Heckman [12] identified three
key streams thought around this concept. First
stream covers those studies that focus on human
resource practice such as recruitment, leadership,
development and succession planning.
The second stream focuses on the
development of talent pool on projecting employee
needs and managed employee growth through
positions [12].
The third stream focuses on managing
talented people. These studies focused on different
level of employee performance called “top
grading” [13] or poor performance employee called
“C players” [6].
Collings and Mellahi [9] added the forth
strand to Lewis and Heckman’s. They noted that
the emphasis is on the identification of key
positions that have potential in creating competitive
advantage to the company rather than on talented
person. The emphasis leads to development of
organizational commitment concerning staffing in
these important positions.
The above focused on who are talented
employees, what activities are planned for talented
employees, what are their needs, and whether they
are identified by positions or by level of
performance. Hatum [14] summarized attributes
and activities used to talent management from the
year 2001 to 2009 and defined talent management
as “a strategic activity aligned with the firm’s
business strategy that aims to attract, develop, and
retain talented employees at each level of the
organization” (p. 13). This is in line with Silzer and
Dowell [4] who concluded talent management in a
long list of human resource processes and
components.
Another school of thought for talent
management defined talent management as the
talents possess by employees. In the book “The
War for Talent” by Michael, Handfield-Jones and
Axelrod [6] ( p. xii) talent management was
defined as “the sum of person’s abilities – his or
her intrinsic gifts, skills knowledge, experience,
intelligence, judgment, attitude, character, and
drive”. They also considered the ability to learn
and grow as a person’s talent.
III. RESEARCH QUESTION
There are three research questions of this
study were: (1) How practitioners define the term
talent management? (2) What are current talent
management practices uses by practitioners? And
(3) what problems are encountered during the
implementation of a talent management program?
IV. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study employed qualitative method
using interview open-ended and closed-ended
questions to collect practitioners’ opinions on the
definition and concept of talent management, talent
management practices used in their organizations,
and problems or obstacles found. To obtain
different perspectives of staffs in all levels of the
company, human resource directors and line
managers from 13 companies located in major
industrial parks located in Rayong province, were
interviewed. Data collection was conducted during
the month of March to May, 2012. Table 1
describes companies, their origins and the study’s
participants’ titles. Researcher spent 30 minutes to
an hour with each participant with tape recorded
under the permission of the participants. The
manuscripts were sent to all participants for
clarification via e-mail. Content analysis was used
to analyze and categorize the data under different
theme – talent management definition, practices,
and problems.
TABLE I. COMPANY DATA
Company
Origin
Company A
USA
Company B
Japan
Company C
Japan
Company D
Japan
Company E
Japan
Participants
HR Director
Senior Administrator
Directors, Personnel department
and
Corporate planning division
HR Director
HR Supervisors
Senior Operations Managers
HR Manager
General Manager
38
© 2013 GSTF
GSTF International Journal on Media & Communications(JMC) Vol.1 No.1, March 2013
Company F
Japan
Company G
Japan
Company H
Thailand
Company I
Thailand
Company J
Thailand
Company K
Thailand
Company L
Thailand
Company M
Thailand
HR director
HR Deputy Director
Marketing Manager
Personnel Manager
Supervisor
General Manager
Operations Manager
HR Director
Public Relations Director
HR Senior Director
Supervisor
Deputy Managing Director
HR Director
Personnel and Administration
Director
Director of Sales
Managing Director
HR Director
V. RESEARCH FINDINS
The findings and discussion are presented
to address the three research questions.
focuses. First group of participants place their focus
on ‘talented people’, from thirteen companies, there
are eight companies that fall into this category but
the second group focuses ‘on people’s talents’, five
companies are in this category. As such, the next
part of the findings presentation will be in 2 parts,
the first part will demonstrate the findings from the
group that focus on talented people and the second
part will cover the group that focuses on people’s
talents.
A. Defining Talent Management
From the review of literature, it was found
that there is a lack of consistency in definitions
given to this term “talent management”. The
focuses of talent management program were on the
company’s critical positions, activities used in
company’s talent management program, talent
competency, and lastly HR processes used to cater
to company’s talent management program. Five
from thirteen companies defined their talent
management program by focusing on activities
used to recruit, develop, and retain outstanding
performance employees. There are dissimilarities in
the scope of talent management program in these
companies, some of them focus on some positions
but other’s focuses are on the entire organizations,
from top to bottom.
There are four companies that focus their
definitions of talent management as development of
competencies of the company’s key positions.
These companies emphasize the importance of
developing abilities necessary for employees who
work in key positions. Succession planning was
brought up by some participants during the
interview about the definition too.
The study findings also revealed that
companies defined their talent management
programs in two key aspects depending on their
1) The first group: Talented people
management
The first group of participants focuses on
outstanding individuals. Some of these companies
do not use the title “talent management program”;
instead different names are assigned to the program
like leadership development program and
individual development program. The later shows
data on how each company implement their talent
management program and how they identify
talented employees including criteria they used in
differentiate talented employees from the rest.
When participants were asked to describe
the talent management programs currently used in
the company, participants presented long list of
activities used in the programs. Most of these
activities align with their HR activities of
recruitment, selection, development, evaluation,
retention and succession planning as shows in table
2.
39
© 2013 GSTF
GSTF International Journal on Media & Communications(JMC) Vol.1 No.1, March 2013
TABLE II. 1ST GROUP’S TALENT MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES
Activity
Recruitment
Selection
Development
Evaluation
Retention
Succession
planning
Company A
9
9
9
9
9
Company E
9
9
Company F
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
Company H
Company J
9
9
Company K
9
9
Company L
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
Company M
The first group of participants responded to the
question of how the company identifies talented
people from the rest of employees, the answers
varied into two key criterions: competency and
performance.
employees for the benefits of
sustainable competitive advantages.
company’s
1.2)
Performance
Employee output was the concern of five
companies when it comes to talented people
identifications. These companies focus on
employees’ performance rather than capabilities
and concern about constructing excellent employee
evaluation process which none of these companies
said to have a perfect process.
Evaluation process applies with talented
people and the rest of their employees are still the
same in term of practice. The big question
companies have is whether they should use the
same evaluation criteria on their talented people
and the rest of their employees. The research found
that none of the participating companies have
separated evaluation programs apply for their
talented employees.
When discuss about how each company
plans their talented people development program,
the answer was quite surprise. Six companies have
development plan for their talented people but have
apply the same development program across
companies. There is no special talent development
program because of the belief that talented people
are good in self-development and the companies
are willing to support talented people development
as requested.
Six of thirteen companies mentioned that
they implement succession planning program by
identifying of employees’ core and functional
competencies. Starting with identifying positions
for their succession plan, most of the companies
said that they focus on the management positions.
It is believed that these positions are critical to the
company performance. The program includes
selecting, training, coaching and evaluating
successors. Three of the six companies said that
1.1)
Competency
There were two types of competency
mentioned in the participants’ answers, core
competency and functional competency. Core
competencies are considered to be critical to a
business achieving competitive advantage, which
are those capabilities that are the basic knowledge,
ability, or expertise in a specific subject area or
skill set used in producing unique products and
services. Functional competency is a job-specific
competency for a given position described in job
description.
Four companies said that they involved
competency in their selection process but not all
four companies concern for both core and
functional competencies. Three companies require
candidate for certain position to possess both core
and functional competencies while the rest require
for only functional competency. The rationale
behind this requirement is that the companies
expect new employees to take part in company’s
sustainability. According to Prahalad and Hamel
[15], definition of core competency is specialized
expertise that is the result of harmonizing complex
streams of technology and work activity. If the
company succeeds in identifying and developing
company’s core competencies it will provide them
with higher chance to sustaining company’s longterm competitive advantage. Therefore, these
companies expect new employees to carry with
them core competencies or at least part of core
competencies and matched with companies’ core
competencies. This will make it convenience for
the companies to further develop these new
40
© 2013 GSTF
GSTF International Journal on Media & Communications(JMC) Vol.1 No.1, March 2013
they have problem in their successor evaluation
because of the confusion of current position and the
competency that they possess for their future
positions. Evaluation feedback is also another issue
in these companies. The problem is that this group
of successors is talented and stepping up the
company ladder, therefore, the succession program
trainer hesitates in providing frank feedback when
it comes to weak spots.
The succession planning has been divided
into two groups; one identified one successor for
one position and another selected group of
successors for one position. The first group selected
the best candidate as a position successor; identify
what competencies they need for the position and
then the training is done by the human resource
(HR) department. The coaching is designed by the
HR and implemented by the person currently in the
position. Therefore, when it comes to evaluation
there always conflicts between the two persons
involved.
For the second group, few successors are
selected for each position, trained, evaluated and
competed with each other for this position. One of
the problems occurs is that team work started to
disappear and performance started to drop because
they are competing to be promoted.
B. The second group: People’s Talents
management
The second group focuses on the talents
of person rather than the person himself. The
rationale is that the identification and development
are simple; the difficulty is how to retain this group
of people in this tough human resource
competition. The fact, that there are several
companies and industrial parks in the area, makes it
even more difficult to retain good or talented
people. Therefore, some of these companies
switched from focusing on people to concentrate on
how to develop talents of employees. The activities
under take by these companies are shown in table
3. The focal point of activity is on the development
process such as developing core and functional
competencies for their employees. There is no need
for them to compete with other companies for
talented people and investment on the recruitment
and selection process can be reduced. They believe
that this money will be well-spent in employee
development process and employees who were
developed felt attached to the company and tend to
stay.
TABLE III. 2ND GROUP’S TALENT MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES
Activity
Selection
Development
Evaluation
Retention
Company B
9
9
9
9
Company C
9
9
9
Company D
9
9
9
Company G
9
9
9
9
The core and functional competencies, of
each position, are identified and human resource
manager is working side by side with the line
managers to ensure that the new comers are trained
and developed to carry on acceptable performance.
The rationale behind this approach is that they
believe that a company is not running only by those
in key positions but it is running by everybody in
the company, therefore when they are all
performing well the outcomes, like organization
performance is better. This group of participants
does not refer to their programs as ‘talent
management program’ but it was called
‘competency-base training’.
The problems, that this group of
companies encountered, emerged when they need
to promote employees to the management
positions. Lack of managerial skills is the problem.
Employees are well trained on their job and
achieved acceptable performance, as specified and
trained by companies. When it comes to promotion,
they are not ready to take up the positions.
Companies have to invest on managerial training,
some companies sent their candidate oversea for
managerial training which is time-consuming and
costly.
The problem that both groups encountered
is during the implementation of talent management
programs. Employees perceived that whoever
participating in the program is considered to be
candidate for management position. In some
companies, the program is known as ‘succession
planning’. Therefore, there are expectations that
they will soon be promoted to higher positions. As
they participating in the program for sometimes
and there is still no sign of promotion, there is burn
out feeling spread throughout these group of
employees. The consequence is that company lost
some of these talented people because of their
talent management program.
VI. DISCUSSION
AND
RECOMMENDATION
The findings show that there is a thin line
between talent management program and human
resource management. It is possible that there are
companies that may not concern about talent
management program but misinterpret between
retention, succession planning and talent
41
© 2013 GSTF
GSTF International Journal on Media & Communications(JMC) Vol.1 No.1, March 2013
management. No matter what the program was
called, practices and activities in organizations still
inhabit to traditional HR activities. Consisting with
what McLean [16] has stated, talent management
may be just a repackaged of traditional HR
activities after all. Answers of participants show
similarity in activities apply in the company’s
talent management programs and ones normally
used by Human Resource Department as shown in
the previous section. To avoid false expectation:
1. Talent management should be a major
responsibility of Human Resource
department, who will work closely
together with line managers, to integrate
all talent management activities for
instance
recruitment,
selection,
performance, development and retention.
2. The clarification of the talent management
program must be developed in term of the
program objectives and participant
selection criteria. The management as well
as human resource manager must
communicate clear message about the
program to all employees in the company.
3. Talent management strategy is future
oriented; therefore a solid career planning
and excellent career management should
be intact. This will help avoiding the
problem of loosing talents due to false
expectations of sides, organization and
talents.
4. In case of the companies implementing
retention program, succession planning
and talent management programs,
clarification of the different or the
similarity of each program is needed.
REFERENCES
[1] I. Tarique and R.S Schuler, “Global talent management:
Literature review, integrative framework, and
suggestions for further research.” Journal of World
Business, Vol. 45, 122-133, 2010.
[2] E. Farndale, H. Scullion, and P. Sparrow, “The role of the
copporate HR function in global talent management,”
Journal of World Business, Vol. 45, 161-168, 2009.
[3] J. Bhatnagar, “Talent management strategy of employee
engagement in Indian ITES employees: key to
retention,” Employee Relations, Vol. 29, No. 6, 640663, 2007.
[4] R. Silzer, and E.B. Dowell, “Strategic: Talent Management
Matters,” Strategy-Driven Talent Management, R.
Silzer and E.B.Dowell,2010, 3 – 72.
[5] McKinsey and Company (2007). “War of Talent.” Wired,
January
9,
2013,
[Online].
Available:
http://autoassembly.mckinsey.com/html/downloads/arti
cles/War_For_Talent.pdf. [accessed: January 2013].
[6] E. Michaels, H. Handfield-Jones, and B. Axelrod, The War
for Talent. Boston, Harvard Business Press, 2001.
[7] A. Puvitayaphan, “Talent management practices in selected
companies listed on the stock exchange of Thailand
(SET)”. Educational Journal of Thailand, Vol. 2, No.
1, 1-8, 2008.
[8] P. Iles, X. Chuai, and D. Preece, Talent Management and
HRM in Multinational companies in Beijing:
Definitions, differences and drivers. Journal of World
Business, Vol. 45, No. 2, 179-189, 2010.
[9] D.G. Collings, and K. Mellahi, “Strategic talent
management: A review and research agenda.” Human
Resource Management Review, Vol. 19, No. 4, 304313, 2009.
[10] R.S. Wellins, A.B. Smith, and L. McGee, The CEO’s guide
to talent management: Building a global leadership
pipeline. Pittsburgh, Development Dimensions
International, 2006.
[11] E. E. Lawler III, Talent: Making people your competitive
advantage, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. (2008)
[12] R.E. Lewis, and R. J. Heckman, “Talent management:
critical review.” Human Resource Management
Review, Vol. 16, No. 2, 139-154, 2006.
[13] B. D. Smart, Top grading: How leading companies win by
hiring, coaching, and keeping the best people, Paramus,
Prentice Hall Press, 1999.
VII. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE STUDY
This study reports views of some
managers’ perception and point of view on the
company talent management program; it is
recommended that perception of the employees
who participated in the program should be
investigated to gain their observation for their
views and activities needed. The argument that
there is a thin line between talent management
program and human resource management is
reasserted by this research. However, it cannot be
concluded that talent management is a re-packaging
of what already exists. Talent management
phenomenon should be explored among
organizations who claimed adopting talent
management practices and research should be
analyzed to discriminate talent management
winning companies from companies implementing
talent
management
unsuccessfully.
Those
characteristics of such entities could be used to
make distinction between talent management and
human resource management and human capital
management.
Author
Dr. Punnee Pimapunsri earned a Bachelor’s
Degree of Business Administration in Hotel
Management, Master of Business Administration from
Assumption University, Thailand, Advanced Business
Practice from University of South Australia, Australia,
and Ph.D in HRD from Burapha University, Thailand.
She is an Associate Dean of Faculty of
Management and Tourism at Burapha University,
Chonbuir Province, Thailand. She started her career as a
University professor at Assumption University and
worked there for 12 years. Her last position there was a
Chairperson for Hotel Management department at ABAC
School of Management. She also works as an HR
consultant for both private and public companies in
Thailand.
42
© 2013 GSTF