Inter-Country Peculiarities of Talent Management in IT-Firms from Emerging Markets

Abstract

The article considers the peculiarities of talent management in Russian, Indian and Chinese companies operating in the field of information technology. Nowadays, organizations from emerging economies face increasing competition, which forces them to seek additional competitive advantages to ensure their leading position in the global environment. Due to this increase in competition and demand for highly qualified personnel in emerging market countries, talent management issues receive more and more attention from researchers, whereas the rapidly growing IT industry contributes the most to the high demand for talented employees, making talent attraction, development and retention extremely relevant. The article is the first of its kind cross-country study to identify common characteristics and distinctive features of talent management on the example of IT companies from developing countries. It continues a series of studies on emerging markets, the existing features (institutional, economic and cultural) of which are prerequisites for the formation of unique management practices in firms operating in emerging economies, including practices related to talent management that, in turn, enable companies to create necessary competitive advantages. During the empirical study, the authors analyzed 60 IT companies from Russia, India and China. Using content analysis, different data related to the attraction, development and retention processes in these organizations, was analyzed. The article devotes considerable attention to identifying the factors that affect talent management practices in companies from developing countries. The obtained results confirm that, although talent management is influenced by various institutional and cultural factors, similarities and differences in these management practices can also be explained by the context of emerging markets and industry specifics. This cross-country analysis, on the one hand, allows one to see the existing peculiarities of implementing talent management practices in a specific country with its unique features and, on the other hand, makes it possible to identify and substantiate specific characteristics of talent management in companies from emerging markets in general.