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Thunderbird International Business Review 

Call for papers  

         Special issue: Global Talent Management in the “New Normal”

Submission Deadline: 31 March 2021 

The notion of a global workforce, made up of diverse, educated, and mobile workforces spread around the world, and the topic of talent management have been the subject of extensive research in the field of international human resource management (Tarique & Schuler, 2010). The cross-border mobility of skilled professionals and the mutual recognition of educational qualifications and experience have been drivers for the transfer of knowledge within the global networks of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). This transfer is facilitated through the use of expatriates and inpatriates by the MNEs (Shao & Al Ariss, 2020), who relocate to fill knowledge gaps in the organization.

However, as Minbaeva and Collings (2013) highlight, the assumption that talent is always portable and knowledge easily transferable is a myth. The mobility of talent across borders is being challenged by the rise of economic and political nationalism in industrialized knowledge-based economies such as the United States with the “America First” slogan and Europe with “Brexit” (Horak, Farndale, Brannen, & Collings, 2019). More recently, the economic slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has put nearly half of the global workforce at risk of job losses (UN News, 2020). In what is being described as the “new normal” (UN, 2020), many countries have closed their borders to foreign nationals or suspended immigration to protect jobs for their citizens (BBC, 2020). The use of global teams and virtual forms of organizing work has been touted as an option to address some of these issues (Mockaitis, Zander, & De Cieri, 2018). Yet, the mutual recognition of qualification remains the domain of government organization and professional bodies (Guo, Jasovska, Rammal, & Rose, 2020), and local registration of an individual’s qualification in certain professions may not be possible if the individual is located in another country.

Several theories and conceptual frameworks have been applied in studies on talent management (for a detailed review of the theories, please see Al Ariss, Cascio, & Paauwe, 2014). However, the extant literature acknowledges the lack of macro-level focus on the issue of global talent management (Khilji, Tarique, & Schuler, 2015). With economic and political nationalism challenging the way global talent is managed, this special issue aims to garner new theoretical contributions at the macro, meso (organizational-level issues in global talent management), and micro (individual talent and HR manager level issues) levels of analysis. This special issue attempts to highlight the human resource challenges that MNEs will face in managing global talent in the “new normal,” and how it affects individuals in the workforce. Some of the topics the special issue will attempt to address:

-       What are the challenges posed by economic and political nationalism for global talent management?

-       What role do professional bodies play in facilitating or restricting the mobility and management of global talent?

-       What are the strategies employed by MNEs to address the challenges posed to the management of global talent?

-       How will restrictions to cross-border movement of skilled professionals affect the intra-organizational knowledge transfer process of MNEs?

-       What are the implications of the “new normal” for individual talent?

Guest Editors:  

Associate Professor Hussain G. Rammal - University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Associate Professor João J.M. Ferreira - University of Beira Interior (UBI), Portugal.

Submission Information:

• All papers will be subject to a double-blind peer review.

• Authors should follow the TIBR guidelines; see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/15206874/homepage/forauthors.html 

• All submissions should be submitted electronically to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tibr

choosing the relevant SI option.

Submissions can be made between 1 March 2021 and 31 March 2021

• Questions about the Special Issue can be directed to the guest editors: Hussain G. Rammal ([log in to unmask]), and João J.M. Ferreira ([log in to unmask]).

References

Al Ariss, A., Cascio, W. F., & Paauwe, J. (2014). Talent management: Current theories and future research directions. Journal of World Business, 49(2), 173-179. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2013.11.001

BBC. (2020). Coronavirus: Immigration to US to be suspended amid pandemic, Trump says. 21 April: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52363852.

Guo, Y., Jasovska, P., Rammal, H. G., & Rose, E. L. (2020). Global mobility of professionals and the transfer of tacit knowledge in multinational service firms. Journal of Knowledge Management, 24(3), 553-567. doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-09-2017-0399

Horak, S., Farndale, E., Brannen, M. Y., & Collings, D. G. (2019). International human resource management in an era of political nationalism. Thunderbird International Business Review, 61(3), 471-480. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/tie.21959

Khilji, S. E., Tarique, I., & Schuler, R. S. (2015). Incorporating the macro view in global talent management. Human Resource Management Review, 25(3), 236-248. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2015.04.001

Minbaeva, D., & Collings, D. G. (2013). Seven myths of global talent management. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(9), 1762-1776. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2013.777539

Mockaitis, A. I., Zander, L., & De Cieri, H. (2018). The benefits of global teams for international organizations: HR implications. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 29(14), 2137-2158. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2018.1428722

Shao, J. J., & Al Ariss, A. (2020). Knowledge transfer between self-initiated expatriates and their organizations: Research propositions for managing SIEs. International Business Review, 29(1), 101634. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ibusrev.2019.101634

Tarique, I., & Schuler, R. S. (2010). Global talent management: Literature review, integrative framework, and suggestions for further research. Journal of World Business, 45(2), 122-133. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2009.09.019

UN. (2020). A new normal: UN lays out roadmap to lift economies and save jobs after COVID-19 (Vol. 27 April): United Nations.

UN News. (2020). Nearly half of global workforce at risk as job losses increase due to COVID-19: UN labour agency. 28 April: https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1062792.