Developing Talent or Maintaining Control?

Sammanfattning

Title: Developing Talent or Maintaining Control? Course: BUSN49 - Master Thesis Authors: Klara Gaskell-Brown and Lovisa Wiksborg Supervisor: Roland Paulsen Purpose: This study aims to understand how employees and managers make sense of talent management, and with a particular focus on the relationship between organizational structures, managerial practices and employee responsibility for career development. Methodology: This is a qualitative study following abductive and interpretive research tradition. The data collection consists of 14 semi-structured interviews, where two were pilot interviews and two follow-up interviews with respondents from the organization AeroNord. Theoretical framing: The sensemaking framework by Weick et al. (2005) as well as the definition of sensegiving by Gioia and Chittipeddi’s (1991) is the primarily theoretical framework of this study. This is also supplemented with the garbage can model by Cohen et al. (1972) as well as previous literature within the field of talent management. Contributions: The study contributes to talent management literature by framing talent management as a mechanism of managerial power and organizational control rather than a purely strategic development system. We also contribute to the literature of symbolic management (Berg, 1986) and add that it can be used in the sense of symbolic talent management. Key words: Talent Management, Career Development, Succession Planning, Sensemaking, Sensegiving, Operational Context, Organizational Structures, Gatekeeping, Expectation Trap