Defining “Talent”: Insights from Management and Migration Literatures for Policy Design

Abstract

Taking the case of defining “talent,” a term that has been widely used but its definitions differ by discipline, organization, policy sector, as well as over time, we demonstrate how the basic definition of a policy subject may affect policy design and the assessment of policy outcomes. We review how “talent” is defined in two sets of literature, talent management and migration studies, and find that definitions fall under one of two categories: binary (“talent” as qualities) or composite (“talent” as a relational concept). The implications of our findings are epistemological and ontological; the findings point to diverse epistemological effects of definitions through developments of indicators, as expected, and they also reveal the policy designers’ ontological starting points. Ontological perspectives are significant because they ultimately determine whether the policy assessments carried out differ in degrees or in kind. In the case of defining “talent,” this means determining which objectives the designers would set (e.g., recruiting vs. cultivating vs. introducing competition), the policy instrumentation for achieving the goals (migration measures vs. education vs. lifelong learning vs. human resource policy), and the type of assessment for measuring policy outcomes (single vs. multiple indicators, qualitative vs. quantitative).

Talent management and organizational sustainability: role of sustainable behaviour

“…The root cause of these catastrophic changes is the self-centered practices of industries, directly linked with the cause and effect cycle (Rimanoczy and Pearson, 2010). Owing to this, consumers, societies, government authorities, investors and employees are increasingly pushing organizations to adopt sustainable business practices (Cerna and Chou, 2019). For instance, according to Accenture (2019), a survey conducted in North America, Asia and Europe, most consumers have switched to sustainable products; even they are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products.…”

Sticky and slippery destinations for academic mobility: the case of Singapore

“…Analytically, the notions of 'brain drain' and 'brain gain' conjure up a zero-sum game in which there are clear winners and losers-a familiar theme also in studies of highly skilled and talent migration (Cerna and Chou 2019;Cerna 2016), and university rankings (Erkkilä and Piironen 2018). In the main, the winners are the mobile individuals (because they left behind a less supportive, or even unsupportive, academic environment) and their academic destinations-the receiving higher education institutions and systems, and the host states and regions (because they gained competitive advantage by attracting talented scholars).…”

Studying Public Policy through Immigration Policy: Advances in Theory and Measurement

“…Moreover, as Monogan (), Reich () and Plutzer et al () all demonstrate, aggregation choices can influence the correlations with various predictors and thus either overestimate or hide significant relationships (also see D'Urso, ). Cerna and Chou () add another real‐world perspective on how measurement counts, that is, affects policy decisions. Specifically, they show how the definition of talent with regard to immigrants then shapes the type of immigrants that get “counted.” The dichotomous binary of high‐ versus low‐skilled migration only allow talent to be found in the former.…”