Talent responses to talent status awareness—Not a question of simple reciprocation

• Author: Susanna Taimitarha,Ingmar Björkman,Kristiina Mäkelä,Mats Ehrnrooth,Jennie Sumelius,Adam Smale
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12190
• Date: 01 July 2018
• Published date: 01 July 2018

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Talent responses to talent status awareness—Not a

question of simple reciprocation

Mats Ehrnrooth

1

|Ingmar Björkman

2

|Kristiina Mäkelä

2

|

Adam Smale

3

|Jennie Sumelius

3

|Susanna Taimitarha

4

1

Department of Management and

Organization, Hanken School of Economics

2

Aalto University School of Business

3

School of Management, University of Vaasa

4

Department of Statistics, Hanken School of

Economics

Correspondence

Mats Ehrnrooth, Department of Management

and Organization, Hanken School of

Economics, P.O. Box 479, Helsinki FIN‐00101,

Finland.

Email: mats.ehrnrooth@hanken.fi

Abstract

How to manage talent effectively is a key question in organisations.

Yet we still know relatively little about talent's psychological reac-

tions to their exclusive status. Based on psychological contract the-

ory and research on status, this study analyses a sample of 321

employees identified as talent by their organisations, only some of

whom were aware of their exclusive talent status. The results pro-

vide evidence that talent status awareness moderates the relation-

ship between a range of employer inducements and talent

obligations, such that it increases the importance of some induce-

ments while diminishing that of others. The study contributes to

the talent management literature by isolating specific effects of tal-

ent status awareness and calling into question extant evidence of its

direct positive effects on talent attitudes. The findings also have

implications for talent status communication, talent management,

and future theorising of talent reactions to their exclusive status.

KEYWORDS

high potentials,performance management, psychological contract,

status, talent management

1|INTRODUCTION

Talent management (TM), defined as an exclusive form of workforce management (Gallardo‐Gallardo, Dries, &

González‐Cruz, 2013), is considered to be one of the most important human resource management challenges in orga-

nisations (Cappelli & Keller, 2014). Yet although the practitioner‐oriented literature abounds with topics related toTM,

empirical academic research has only recently begun to gain momentum (Dries, 2013; McDonnell, Collings, Mellahi, &

Schuler, 2017). One strand of this emerging academic literature focuses on employees' psychological reactions to TM

(Dries, Forrier, De Vos, & Pepermans, 2014; Malik & Singh, 2014). We extend this research by studying how talent

status awareness influences the way talent react to a range of management practices, or employer inducements as

defined below. By so doing, we also create a bridge between extant research focusing on individual talent and

research on how to manage talent (McDonnell et al., 2017).

Received: 9 October 2015 Revised: 3 January 2018 Accepted: 18 January 2018

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12190

Hum Resour Manag J. 2018;28:443–461. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltdwileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj 443

Research suggests that both mere belief (Björkman, Ehrnrooth, Mäkelä, Smale, & Sumelius, 2013) and more cer-

tain knowledge (Gelens, Hofmans, Dries, & Pepermans, 2014) of being identified as talent are associated with positive

employee attitudes. Inversely, research also indicates that ambiguity (Dries & De Gieter, 2014) and incongruent

employer–employee perceptions (Sonnenberg, van Zijderveld, & Brinks, 2014) concerning talent status can be prob-

lematic. Despite this, a surprising number of organisations still choose not to communicate clearly to talent about their

special status (Dries & De Gieter, 2014; cf. Silzer & Church, 2010; Björkman et al., 2013). This choice is partly due to

concerns that transparency will increase expectations, self‐satisfaction, and complacency among those identified as

talent (Dries & De Gieter, 2014; cf. Silzer & Church, 2010). Some support for this can be found in research on status

and status dynamics (Bothner, Kim, & Smith, 2012; Chen et al., 2012; cf. Kehoe, Lepak, & Bentley, 2016), but these

reactions remain understudied within TM. To address this important research gap and understand better the “psycho-

logical dynamics”of TM (Dries et al., 2014, p. 569), we aim to answer the following research question: Do talent that

are aware of their exclusive status respond differently to employer inducements compared with talent that are

unaware? In so doing, we also seek to address the important practical question of the consequences of informing tal-

ent about their status.

In the present study, we define “talent”as employees whom the employer considers to be potential future

leaders, that is, high potentials (Gallardo‐Gallardo et al., 2013; cf. Gelens et al., 2014), and status as “the prestige,

respect, and admiration that individuals enjoy in the eyes of others”(Lount & Pettit, 2012, p. 15; cf. Pettit, Yong, &

Spataro, 2010). Conceptually, we introduce the notion of “talent status awareness”to help us make the distinction

between identified talent that are unaware of their talent status and those that are actually aware of it. Empirically,

we analyse a sample of 321 employees within eight Finnish corporations who have all been formally identified by

the organisation as talent. Within this sample, only 45% were personally aware of their talent status, whereas the

remaining 55% of the sample were unaware. This provides an ideal empirical setting for isolating and studying the

moderating effects of talent status self‐awareness.

Theoretically, our research is primarily grounded in psychological contract theory (Coyle‐Shapiro & Conway,

2005; Rousseau, 1995) and its central framework of employer inducements and employee obligations. Here, employer

inducements refer broadly to various management practices or forms of organisational investments in employees,

such as rewards, recognition, and support, whereas employee obligations refer to employees' commitment to recipro-

cate such inducements (Coyle‐Shapiro & Conway, 2005; Lee, Liu, Rousseau, Hui, & Chen, 2011). Talent commitment

to reciprocate organisational inducements is a cornerstone of TM, and thus crucial to understand, given that the

primary goals of TM are to increase the retention and commitment of talent and to accelerate their development

(Dries & De Gieter, 2014). To connect to these goals, we use a construct of obligations that focuses on talents'

commitment to accept dynamic performance demands and to develop their value for the organisation, hereafter

referred to as “talent obligations.”Although psychological contract theory provides the basic framework within which

we examine how status awareness changes the effect of organisational inducements on talent obligations, we also

build on research into the effects of status and status dynamics (Bothner et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2012; Marr & Thau,

2014). This research stream sheds light on a range of psychological reactions to status, status gain, and status loss,

which help to explain how talent status awareness can change the terms of the psychological contract and thereby

the way in which talent react to organisational inducements.

Our study contributes to the emerging literature on psychological reactions to TM (Björkman et al., 2013;

Gelens et al., 2014; Malik & Singh, 2014; Sonnenberg et al., 2014) by isolating moderating effects of talent sta-

tus awareness among identified talent. The results call into question extant research on the direct motivational

effects of talent status awareness and offer substantive evidence for the conjecture that talent attitudes may

not be “only affected by the high potential label itself”but rather by a combination of talent status and

organisational inducements (Gelens et al., 2014, p. 170). This extends extant theorising of the effects of talent

status awareness. Our results also shed further light on the practical consequences of transparency in commu-

nication about TM (Dries & De Gieter, 2014), consistent with organisational concerns about the undesirable

effects of talent status awareness, such as increased expectations, self‐satisfaction, and complacency. Finally,

444 EHRNROOTH ET AL.