Why talent management falls short – Hanken receives funding to study line managers

“The shortage of leadership talent is a growing concern for large companies. Although talent management has become a key part of HR work, new research shows a gap between strategy and practice - where talent programs are often implemented inconsistently, leading to tensions within organisations”, says Jennie Sumelius, principal investigator of the project and professor of management and organisation at Hanken.

The project will focus specifically on how line managers understand and carry out talent management in multinational companies.

“Line managers have received surprisingly little research attention so far, even though they play a crucial role in putting talent management practices into action. This lack of focus limits our understanding of how talent management actually works in practice, what effects it has, and how those effects come about”, says Sumelius.

The project explores two key questions: How do line managers interpret and apply corporate talent management practices? And to what extent do they exercise their own judgment, sometimes diverging from official policies and guidelines? The researchers will take an in-depth look at two Nordic multinational companies - one based in Finland and the other in Sweden.

The two-year project Understanding tensions in TM: A study of how line managers interpret and enact talent management in multinational corporations is carried out in cooperation with Stockholm School of Economics and will start in the middle of next year.