Talent Management and Workforce Differentiation
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Michael Koch; Elise Marescaux
- Source
- The Routledge Companion to Talent Management ISBN: 9781315474687
- Subject
- Social comparison theory
ComputingMilieux_THECOMPUTINGPROFESSION
business.industry
Business administration
Equity theory
Empirical research
Talent management
8. Economic growth
Workforce
Workforce planning
Profitability index
Marketing
Human resources
business
- Language
Workforce differentiation is closely related to Talent Management (TM). An important debate within workforce differentiation is whether it should focus on jobs or people. The question regarding which employees should be the focus of scarce investment resources has been called “an evergreen question”. Empirical research has indeed found that many organizations employ Human Resource (HR) systems that differentiate between core and support employees. A stream of publications in books and practitioner outlets also provide “how-to” advice on differentiating either strategically important people or positions. Workforce differentiation is assumed to create value for the organization in terms of productivity, innovation, profitability, etc. Social comparison theory as well as equity theory can be used to explain this. Social comparison theory argues that employees have the inherent tendency to compare themselves with co-workers. Equity theory builds further on this arguing that employees react particularly negatively when they perceive outcome differences to be unfair.