Chapter 1: Talent Management: A Decade of Developments

Talent management (TM) has become a mainstream area of research in the fields of business and management over the past decade or so. It is now a mainstay as a research topic in leading academic conferences, and papers on TM regularly appear in high-impact academic journals. However, in the early days of the evolution of the area, there were limited opportunities for scholars to disseminate their emerging research ideas on TM. Many skeptics viewed it as a management fad with limited theoretical or empirical value. It was with these and other challenges in mind that the European Association for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) workshop on TM was created as an arena for scholars to disseminate their research on the topic of TM, conceived in a broad way. It was also envisaged as key to developing a network of international scholars with shared interests in the emerging area of TM. Indeed, Gallardo-Gallardo, Nijs, Dries, and Gallo (2015) explicitly pointed to the role which the EIASM TM workshops, combined with journal special issues, played in the growth of a scientific community dedicated to the area of TM. As Chairs, we are particularly proud of the reputation that the workshops have gained as a developmental network. The balance between established scholars, who are among the leading academics in the area, and emerging researchers and doctoral students contributes greatly to the dynamic and engaging discussion at our annual workshops.