Human Resource Development Review 2016, Vol. 15(3) 340 –358

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Theory and Conceptual Article

The Cultural Evolution of Talent Management: A Memetic Analysis

Stephen Swailes1

Abstract Using the concept of memes as cultural transmitters and replicators, this article explores the origins of a talent meme and the subsequent evolution of talent management (TM). The sociogenesis of TM is traced through historic developments in management thinking. The rise of individualism in the late 20th century created the conditions for the birth of TM, and the proliferation of the meme since birth is analyzed. The meme reproduces through its psychological appeal and the logic of itself, and the article uses an established approach to reveal cultural rather than rational explanations for TM. Five reasons for the attractiveness, survival, and replication of the talent meme in business organizations are identified. They are salience with business conditions, lack of a competing meme, ambiguity, complexity reduction, and enhanced control over a powerful group. Understanding more about the psychological attractors attached to the talent meme forms part of an expanded research agenda.

Keywords talent management, memetics, innovation diffusion, organizational change

Introduction

As a distinctive approach to human resource management, the phrase “talent manage- ment” (TM) first appeared in the 1990s (Casse, 1994; Istvan, 1991) and now attracts a strong practitioner and research following (Lawler, 2008; Silzer & Dowell, 2010; Sparrow, Scullion, & Tarique, 2014). Although it can take many forms, it typically

1University of Huddersfield, UK

Corresponding Author: Stephen Swailes, The Business School, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK. Email: [email protected]

664812HRDXXX10.1177/1534484316664812Human Resource Development ReviewSwailes research-article2016

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concerns the identification, development, and deployment of employees deemed to have above average potential to contribute to an organization. The primary variation involves a broadly elitist approach toward identifying high-performing and high- potential employees and providing them with a differentiated management experience to that enjoyed by the majority workforce. This may be complemented by a robust approach to managing employees whose performance falls below expectations which is necessary, in a “hard” TM mind-set, to liberate the talents of employees that poorly performing managers are suppressing (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, & Alexrod, 2001).

The idea of memes was introduced by Richard Dawkins (1976) as an analogy to genes and the ways that genes replicate and survive through time, and this article applies meme theory to explain contemporary interest in TM. Memes can be thought of as social cultural phenomena such as ideas or fashions that, like genes, adapt, repli- cate, and survive throughout time and which help to explain cultural transmission (Blackmore, 1999). Some memes are short-lived, others survive over long periods. They pass from brain to brain often with some level of variation occurring each time transmission occurs. The receiving brain becomes host to the meme and helps to prop- agate it. Religions, arguably, are memes that have adapted over a long time and which derive their survivability because they provide answers to some difficult questions about human existence.

There is considerable potential for the application of meme theory in organization development. Specific applications include advertising (Williams, 2000), mergers and acquisitions (Vos & Kelleher, 2001), marketing (Pech, 2003), the cultural evolution of the firm (Weeks & Gelunic, 2003), innovation (Voelpel, Leibold, & Streb, 2005), and busi- ness process reengineering (O’Mahoney, 2007). Defined originally as “a unit of cultural transmission” (Dawkins, 1976, p. 192), memes are elements of culture that transmit ideas and are passed on especially by imitation (Blackmore, 1999, p. 43). The replication of these cultural units helps to explain cultural evolution (Aunger, 2007); in this case, why some organizational cultures adapt to work with a talent mind-set. Management innova- tions that are successful, in the sense that they are widely adopted, are memes that “infect” organizations and are transmitted by and through, among other things, networks of execu- tives, consultants, gurus, and conferences (O’Mahoney, 2007). There seems little doubt now about the usefulness of the idea of memes to understanding cultural transmission because they contribute to the distinctive culture of organizations that is itself created by the enactment of combinations of memes (Weeks & Gelunic, 2003).

The theoretical treatment applied in this article builds on previous studies which have focused on coming to terms with the meaning of talent (Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Gallardo-Gallardo, Dries, & Gonzalez-Cruz, 2013; Nijs, Gallardo-Gallardo, Dries, & Sels, 2014; Tansley, 2011); understanding TM practices and their effects (Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, 2016; Thunnissen, Boselie, & Fruytier, 2013); and mapping the dominant theoretical frameworks (Gallardo-Gallardo, Nijs, Dries, & Gallo, 2015). An underlying assumption of the talent literature is that talent (typically defined as high-potential current or future employees) is scarce but when found, devel- oped, and deployed in pivotal positions makes a disproportionately high contribution to organizations.

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A feature of the literature, however, is an ongoing debate about the meaning of tal- ent and TM. For the most part, talent is assumed to be a relative quality of individuals such as ability or mastery (Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2013) and is judged in relation to context. Talent is usually equated to a scarce combination of performance and poten- tial (Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, 2016) although inclusive approaches to TM see talent as something that all employees possess to some extent (Swailes, Downs, & Orr, 2014). However, debates about the etymology of “talent” (Adamsen, 2016; Tansley, 2011) or contemporary definitions of talent (Nijs et al., 2014) do not matter much for the present article because of its interest in explaining the spread of a meme for which ambiguity among its hosts is a key characteristic. What matters here is the cultural attraction to “talent” as a concept in business discourse rather than its various mean- ings to scholarly or practitioner communities because TM is essentially the manifesta- tion of the ways in which the talent meme plays out in the host organization. Related literatures on strategic TM (Sparrow et al., 2014) and global TM (Schuler, Jackson, & Tarique, 2011; Scullion & Collings, 2011) can be seen as mutations of the original meme.

Thunnissen et al. (2013) noted the top-down nature of TM and called for new per- spectives to widen its theoretical framework. Gallardo-Gallardo et al. (2015) identi- fied the resource-based view, international human resource management including global talent management, ways of assessing talent, and institutionalism as the domi- nant frameworks used to-date, and their treatment of TM as a phenomenon is pertinent here in emphasizing that practice is running ahead of theory (see also, Cascio & Boudreau, 2016). Although scholars have attempted to map the TM field, the literature contains little consideration of TM as anything but a rational choice. In a notable exception, Iles, Preece, and Chuai (2010) considered whether TM displays features of management fashions but do not explain its appeal and call for research into the factors behind its adoption. Cappelli (2009, 2010) shows how firms have used management development, and by implication historic approaches to TM, in response to changing market conditions but does not consider TM directly. The point of departure for the present article, therefore, is to trace the evolution of the specific notion of talent not the broader concept of management development and also to provide a fresh perspective on innovation transmission.

Of course, TM attracts a range of theoretical perspectives to explain why it occurs (e.g., organizational institutionalism), why it should work (e.g., resource-based view and workforce differentiation), and its effects on participants (e.g., organizational jus- tice), but the present article shows that they do not fully acco

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