Special issue of International Journal of Human Resource Management: A contextualized approach to Talent Management: Advancing the field

Nowadays, there is little doubt that Talent Management (TM) is a hot topic not only for practitioners but also for scholars. According to Collings, Scullion, and Vaiman (2015), it is one of the fastest growing areas of academic work in the management field over recent decades. However, despite the increasing schol-arly attention during the last years (cf. Gallardo-Gallardo, Nijs, Dries, & Gallo, 2015; Thunnissen, Boselie, & Fruytier, 2013) many questions remain, particularly, those related to what happens in practice, and, above all, why. In fact, there is little knowledge about how TM is conceived, implemented and developed within organizations, not to mention about its outcomes. TM is usually designed and implemented following a one-dimensional, nar-rowed and biased approach (Thunnissen et al., 2013). Indeed, there is little proof of having taken into account the organizational context and the needs, preferences and beliefs of different actors from inside and outside the organization that have an impact on the organizational behavior and its outcomes (some exceptions are: Buttiens, 2016; King, 2015; Thunnissen, 2016). Yet, in a recent review of the empirical literature on TM, the authors found that although research has been conducted in a broad variety of contexts (i.e. countries and organizations), the impact of contextual factors as well as the role of actors in a specific context on the conceptualization and implementation of TM has been largely neglected (Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, 2016). Sidani and Al Ariss's (2014) contribution is one of the rare examples in examining the impact of institutional drivers on the way the organizations in the Gulf Cooperation Council adopt and implement TM practices. While scholars and organizations adopt different approaches towards the meaning of talent, TM goals and TM outcomes, the impact of organizational configuration (i.e. information on organizational size, sector/industry and scope)