This paper explores the possibilities and potential surrounding inclusive talent management in contrast to conventional normative treatments. By closely examining the meaning of 'inclusive' in relation to talent, the paper moves towards a definition of inclusive talent management which is contextualised in a four-part typology of talent management strategies which offers greater conceptual clarity to researchers working in this field. Our conceptualisation of inclusive talent management is further located in the traditions of positive psychology and the Capability Approach.The practical implications of introducing inclusive talent management strategies are considered.

Developing greater cooperation between researchers and practitioners is a long‐standing concern in social science. Academics and practitioners working together to coproduce research offers a number of potential gains for public administration scholarship, but it also raises some dilemmas. The benefits include bringing local knowledge to bear on the field, making better informed policy, and putting research to better use. However, coproduction of research also involves managing ambiguous loyalties, reconciling different interests, and negotiating competing goals. The authors reflect on their experience of coproducing a research project in the United Kingdom and discuss the challenges that coproducers of research confront. They situate the discussion within a consideration of traditions of public administration scholarship and debates about the role of the academy to understand better the politics of their joint practice. Thinking about the politics of coproduction is timely and enables the authors to become more attuned to the benefits and constraints of this mode of research..

This article explores local government traditions in the UK. This task is an important one for scholars who wish to understand and appreciate the rich cultural complexity of local government organizations. In local government settings, traditions can be used in the study and evaluation of political and managerial practices. They provide lenses through which the routines, structures and processes of management and politics may be viewed. The delineation of multiple traditions heightens the sense that local government is not a unified homogeneous organizational entity, but rather a melange of voices, interests and assumptions about how to organize, prioritize and mobilize action. They can be used to engage practitioners with the idea that different traditions inform political and managerial practices and processes in local councils. The approach embraces the significance of participants' constitutive stories about local government rather than the search for essential truths about the politics and management of the public sector.

This paper develops a theory of organizational ghosts, a concept that describes the haunted and burdensome aspects of organizational life and in particular of leadership action. The concept of organizational ghosts is not offered as yet another metaphor, a lens through which to analyse particular organizations. Rather, I offer my discussion of ghosts as a theoretical concept that explains how inheritances of the past haunt the relations and struggles of the present. I tell a ghostly tale of the everyday leadership and learning practices of UK local government chief executives, and provide an exploration of organizational ghosts as a contribution to the growing interest in the action in the shadows, atmospheres, margins and boundaries of organizations. Drawing upon an ethnographic study of UK local councils, and embracing the multiplicity and heterogeneity of organizational ghosts, the paper considers the theoretical, political and ethical stakes involved in taking ghosts seriously. Its contribution is to show how ghosts are insinuated in organizations and to highlight leaders as figures who are both willing agents and uneasy hosts of hauntings, and to point to the mediating role of leaders in handling confrontations between the past, the present and the future.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to offer a reflexive account of the co-production of a qualitative research project with the aim of illuminating the relationships between research participants. Design/methodology/approach -The paper draws upon personal experience of designing and conducting a research project into management learning, run jointly between an academic and a senior practitioner. The methodological issues involved and the reflexive dynamics of how the work of research collaboration is accomplished are considered. Findings -Engaging with radical reflexivity helps to produce insights about the co-production process.Originality/value -This paper contributes to the field of reflexivity and is innovative in its context of academic-practitioner research.