Talent management i organisationer : Ett kritiskt managementperspektiv

Sammanfattning: This dissertation is about talent management. It is focusing on the provisioning of talented managers to the global executive level. The aim is to increase the understanding of how talent management is practiced, with consequences for organizations and employees. In order to meet this purpose, three inquiries have guided the research process. The first inquiry examines the practice of talent management, the management practice. The second inquiry examines the construction of talent management with a power-perspective. The third inquiry examines how challenges can arise when doing talent management.A multinational company constitutes the empirical field, specifically the management of its local branch with head-office in Sweden. One result of this dissertation is an inventory of the assessment tools and other guiding principles uses by the company’s actors in the daily work with talent management.The dissertation applies a relational perspective. It is a multi-level study based on Bourdieu’s theoretical framework. For this purpose, Bourdieu’s triad of central concepts is used: fields, habitus and capital, as well as doxa and symbolic violence.To create the empirical material, critical ethnographic method was chosen. The method has the potential to give close descriptions of the ordinary practice in everyday life in the workplace. An inside-perspective on management was enabled by participatory inquiry.A survey was made of tools, including assessment instruments, used in the company. The analysis showed that talent management was dominated by a mainstream management perspective. By applying a critical management perspective, power was analyzed and the importance of language was emphasized. In this way, we investigated how talent management was constructed in the management practice in the Swedish branch of a multinational company.This have resulted in identification of an elite-paradox, HRM-paradox and KPI (metrics)-paradox. Also, several repertoires to cope with power-games was identified. Paradoxes could have consequences for both the organization and the employees. Power perspectives also highlight challenges with gender equality that can result in women’s talent being an untapped source. As a result, the study raises questions about inclusion and exclusion. It has shown that power-fields emerged in the organisation, leading to that talent-capital was valued and gained in a relational power-game. One result is to shed light on the power of the doxa, that is norms taken for granted, and that the doxan hides paradoxes that can cause challenges for organizations and individuals. This result is interpreted in a model that illustrates a power-surface showing that talent management can serve as a façade with a cosmetic function, hiding paradoxes caused by power. The dissertation provides several possible contributions to theory and practice. It theoretically links talent management to critical management studies (CMS) in general and especially to power-analysis theory of a Bourdieuan type. Contribution to the field of practice (and theory) could be to provide a foundation for further development of a guide to analyse talent management in organizations from a critical management perspective.Keywords: Talent Management, Global Talent Management (GTM), Critical Management Studies (CMS), Bourdieu, Power, Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM), Critical Ethnographic Method