- Title
- Elucidating the influence of talent management practices on talent outcomes through talent management attributions and job-related affective responses: a psychological perspective
- Creator
- De Silva, Muthuwadura Thilini Thedushika
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Talent Management (TM) involves activities and processes that attract, develop and retain employees who are of particular value to an organisation (talents) to reach strategic and sustainable success. Managing talents is considered essential to surviving in today’s dynamic, new-normal and competitive business environment, especially in service organisations operating in resource-constrained environments. Having structured and consistent TM systems do not guarantee generating results and return on investment of TM unless organisations examine the effectiveness of TM through understanding the individual outcomes of talents, as the central participants of TM programs at work. Examining talents’ perceptions of TM is crucial to determine talent outcomes that indicate whether the organisational TM inducements/practices are valued, yet do not critically reflect insights into talents’ experience of agreements and disagreements regarding those inducements. Understanding the perceived reality to assess the effectiveness of TM practices requires unveiling how talents make sense of their TM practices and how these meanings influence their proximal attitudinal and behavioural outcomes that contribute to service excellence and organisational success. The extant TM literature does not sufficiently explain psychological mechanisms through which talents make sense of their TM practices. This study bridges this critical gap in the literature by incorporating theory-driven and context-specific exploration into the psychological (micro) perspective of exclusive TM, focused on the central recipients of TM practices. This thesis seeks to conceptualise the meanings talents ascribe to underlined intentions behind organisational TM practices drawing human resource attributions, signalling and sense-making theories within the wider context of social exchange to elucidate the influence of TM practices on talent outcomes. It develops a theoretical framework that captures key constructs of perceived TM practices, commitment-focused TM attributions, control-focused TM attributions, job satisfaction, job strain, along with talent outcomes; organisational commitment, turnover intention and psychological well-being. In addition, the talents’ perception of their line manager’s TM implementation effectiveness and the individual self-concept of talents was also examined to moderate the relationship in the theoretical framework. This research adopted a mixed-method approach, with a qualitative phase followed by a quantitative phase. The qualitative phase involved semi-structured interviews with 5 TM process owners (TM/HR managerial group) and 17 TM process participants (talent group) of medium to large Sri Lankan banking sector organisations. The qualitative findings highlight context-specific information regarding key TM practices and designing and implementing TM processes. Importantly, the findings indicate that talents attach multiple meanings through their perceptions regarding the signals of organisational TM practices. Informed by the qualitative findings and the literature, the study’s theoretical framework was tested in the quantitative phase which involved a cross-sectional online survey with usable 182 responses received from a sample of talents from the Sri Lankan banking sector. The quantitative data was analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The quantitative findings indicate that talents’ perceptions of the availability of TM practices act as a signal that positively influenced developing commitment-focused attributions regarding TM practices yet did not negatively influence developing control-focused TM attributions. As a positive attributional pathway, commitment-focused attributions that reflect concerns for well-being and service quality positively influenced talent outcomes directly through an affective response - job satisfaction. As a negative attributional pathway, control-focused TM attributions that reflect concerns for cost reductions and work intensification did not directly influence talent outcomes, yet largely influence indirectly through a job-related affective response, that is, via job strain. Further, the talents’ perceptions of their line manager’s TM implementation effectiveness indicated a direct positive influence on commitment-focused TM attributions yet no effect on control-focused TM attributions. Lastly, talents’ self-concept was found to moderate the relationship between the TM attributions and organisational commitment as a talent outcome indicating a strengthening and buffering effect based on the nature of the attributional pathways in predicting talent outcomes. The study contributes to the current understanding of how talents ascribe different meanings to organisational TM practices and their subsequent effect on their outcomes in a financial service environment of a developing country. Talents are considered to be one of the most crucial drivers for growth and success in challenging knowledge-intensive structured service environments. For TM/HR managers, understanding talent’s attributions to organisational TM practices as sense makers enables them to ensure talents receive signals of TM’s underlying strategic purposes as the management intended. Such understanding help improves communication within TM processes to signal talents to elevate their work outcomes while managing investment over human capital effectively in resource-constrained environments. The proposed theoretical model will serve as a roadmap for future empirical advancement of the TM literature.
- Subject
- talent management practices; talent management attributions; talent outcomes; line manager’s TM implementation effectiveness; individual self-concept; Sri Lankan banking sector
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1467815
- Identifier
- uon:47914
- Rights
- Copyright 2022 Muthuwadura Thilini Thedushika De Silva
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
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| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
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