Managing expert talent

Abstract

Introduction The previous chapter focused on using the resource-based view (RBV) of strategy to think about talent. One of the key critiques that it made of the talent management perspective was that it overplays the importance of general management and underplays the value of expert knowledge and is antithetical to the RBV that has come to dominate the field of strategy. The RBV is one of the foundational pillars of dynamic capabilities. This chapter builds on the previous arguments, and discusses the management of talent in terms of the dynamic capabilities framework. In recent decades, expert talent has become more important than ever for the creation and management of technology in the global economy (Albert and Bradley, 1997; Reich, 2002). Many job categories are becoming so complex and interdependent that managing them in a traditional structured hierarchical format is no longer a realistic option. Some decomposition of processes into specialized functional tasks is still necessary, but deep hierarchies are too cumbersome and inflexible.