Why mimicking competitors doesn’t plug the leaky talent pipeline : Working paper

Talent scarcity in many parts of the world leads to the necessity to enlarge talent pools in order to provide enough future holders of key positions. Taking the scholarly discussion at the overlap of talent management and current careers literature as a starting point our qualitative empirical research provides insights in talent’s career decisions in an eastern emerging market, India, and a western developed country, Germany. 49 interviews with internationally experienced knowledge-workers were held to find out how to they come to career decisions throughout their career. Special focus was the balancing act of professional and private life sphere. An inductive-deductive approach was used to develop categories in MaxQda. Results show the impact of institutional frame, cultural context, and gender differences. Consequently, a stronger focus on talent’s different life phases with context specific deviations when configuring Talent Management in Multinational Enterprises can be advised.