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PurposeEmployees need a sustainable career to prolong their working lives. The ability, motivation and opportunity to work form an important basis for sustainable careers across the lifespan. However, over the lifespan of their careers employees are likely to experience several career shocks (e.g. becoming chronically ill or being fired) which might result in unsustainable trajectories. This study aims to contribute to the literature on sustainable careers by unraveling the process through which careers shocks relate to career (un)sustainability and what role perceptions of human resource practices play in the process.Design/methodology/approachThirty-three in-depth retrospective interviews with participants of 50 years and older were conducted and analyzed using a template analysis.FindingsResults showed that career shocks influence career sustainability through a process of changes in demands or changes in resources, which in turn, relate to changes in person–job fit. When person-job–fit diminished, the ability, motivation and opportunity to continue working decreased, whereas when person–job fit improved, the ability, motivation and opportunity to continue working improved as well. Organizations appear to be able to diminish the negative consequences of career shocks by offering job resources such as HR practices in response to career shocks.Research limitations/implicationsA limitation of this study is the retrospective nature of the interviews, which could have resulted in recollection bias.Practical implicationsThis study gives HRM practitioners insight into the HR practices that are effective in overcoming career shocks.Originality/valueThis study extends existing literature by including career shocks as possible predictors of sustainable careers.

Personal growth is not only a central individual need but also a key requirement for organizational success. Nevertheless, workplace interventions aimed at stimulating the personal growth of employees are still scarce. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of an intervention that aimed at the identification, development, and use of employee strengths in stimulating personal growth initiative. We conducted a field experiment with a sample of 84 educational professionals who were either assigned to a strengths intervention or a wait-list control group. In a 1-month follow-up study, we found that the intervention had a direct effect on general self-efficacy (GSE) and an indirect effect on personal growth initiative. Moreover, in line with plasticity theory we found that the intervention was especially effective for participants with low to medium initial levels of GSE. We conclude that a strengths intervention may provide a brief and effective tool for organizations that aim for self-directed learning among their staff, in particular when offered to employees who lack confidence in their own abilities. Practitioner pointsIn a 1 month follow-up study, we found that a strengths intervention had a positive direct effect on general self-efficacy and an indirect effect on personal growth initiative. In line with plasticity theory, we found that the strengths intervention was especially effective for participants with low to medium initial levels of general self-efficacy.

Two assumptions about employee reactions are currently driving debates around talent management (TM): First, that TM leads to positive outcomes in employees identified as talents; and second, that TM creates differences between talents and employees not identified as talents. This review critically evaluates these assumptions by contrasting theoretical arguments from the non-empirical literature on employee reactions to TM with the empirical evidence available. Our analysis partly supports both assumptions. Although positive reactions to TM were indeed found in terms of affective, cognitive, and behavioral employee outcomes, our review also found evidence for negative affective reactions in employees identified as talents. Significant differences between talents and non-talents were found for behavioral reactions, but not for affective and cognitive reactions; for the latter types of reactions, our review found mixed effects. We summarize these findings in an integrative framework on the basis of social exchange theory, which our review shows is the dominant theory underlying assumptions about employee reactions to TM. We propose that 3 elements are missing in our current understanding, which can help explain our review findings: uncertainty, power, and social identity. We conclude with recommendations for TM research and practice.

This paper reviews studies of strengths interventions published between 2011 and 2016. Strengths interventions aim to promote well-being or other positive outcomes by facilitating strengths identification, and sometimes also strengths use and/or development. The present review provides an overview of the different strengths interventions that are investigated, their effectiveness, and moderating and mediating factors. Results of the 18 (quasi-)experimental studies that were identified through a systematic literature search showed that all types of strengths interventions had positive outcomes in terms of well-being, job outcomes (e.g. work engagement), personal growth initiative, and group or team outcomes (e.g. class cohesion). Hope, positive affect, authentic self-expression, perceptions of the employment relationship, and feelings of social worth were identified as mediators, whereas extraversion and having specific strengths (e.g. persistence) were identified as moderators. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for future research and practice.Keywords: Strengths interventions, positive psychology, well-being, review, positive-activity model

Talent management is a growing research stream within human resource management, and despite the great progress accomplished in the definition and conceptualization of talent management, there is s...

Organizational talent management has been widely recognized as a key driver of firm performance. Existing theoretical and empirical work in the domain has drawn on Social Exchange Theory to suggest that talent management affects organizational performance by eliciting positive reactions such as high organizational commitment and work effort among the firm's most high performing and high potential employees (i.e., talented employees). While this work has produced valuable insights, it has largely neglected the active role talented employees may play in gaining access to and in capitalizing on talent-management practices. The present manuscript aims to close this gap by integrating the concept of proactive behavior into talent-management theorizing. To this end, the manuscript presents a new conceptual model incorporating three potential relationships between talent proactive behavior and talent management. This model points out relevant avenues for future research in the talent-management domain.

Personal growth initiative (PGI), defined as being proactive about one's personal development, is critical to graduate students' academic success. Prior research has shown that students' PGI can be enhanced through interventions that focus on stimulating developmental activities. Within this study, we aimed to investigate whether an intervention that stimulates development in the area of one's personal strengths (strengths intervention) has more beneficial effects on students' PGI than an intervention that stimulates development in the area of individual deficiencies (deficiency intervention). We conducted 2 longitudinal field experiments to investigate the effects of the 2 interventions on students' PGI (Experiment 1) and the potential mediating role of psychological capital (PsyCap) in this regard (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, 105 (N = 105) university students participated in either a strengths intervention or a deficiency intervention. Results indicated that the strengths intervention increased the students' PGI in the short but not in the long term, whereas the deficiency intervention did not affect PGI. Ninety students (N = 90) participated in Experiment 2, in which we slightly refined both interventions by putting a stronger emphasis on the ongoing development of strengths (strengths intervention) or correction of deficiencies (deficiency intervention) by adding posttraining assignments. Results suggested that participating in both interventions led to increases in PGI over a 3-month period, but that these increases were bigger for the strengths intervention group. Furthermore, the relationship between the strengths intervention and PGI was mediated by hope as one component of PsyCap.

It is assumed that employees display favorable attitudes (e.g., high organizational commitment) and behaviors (e.g., high work effort) when identified as organizational talent. If they did not, the idea that talent management creates value by making disproportionate investments into organizational talent would need to be reconsidered. We reviewed the literature to explore whether the assumed favorable reactions among talent are valid and the results are not straightforward. Many studies found evidence for the assumption; however, several studies revealed that talent designation bears considerable risks: Being identified as talent creates (overly optimistic) expectations of receiving rewards and benefits from the organization and it increases the felt pressure to meet high performance standards. We discuss the findings in the light of social exchange theory, psychological contract theory, and others commonly used in talent-management research, highlighting key issues regarding talent designation and identifying avenues for future research.

In order to explain how and why talent management can contribute to a firm's sustained competitive advantage, we need to gain insights into the philosophies about talent that underpin talent management. This article introduces four talent philosophies that vary in their perception of talent as (a) rare (exclusive) or universal (inclusive), and (b) stable or developable: the exclusive/stable; exclusive/developable; inclusive/stable; and inclusive/developable talent philosophy. We discuss basic assumptions, talent-management practices, opportunities, and challenges for each of the four philosophies. Based on this discussion, testable propositions for future research are developed.

Assumptions about employee reactions are currently driving much of the debate around talent management (TM). It is unclear, however, to what extent evidence from studies on employee reactions to TM...

In order to contribute to the theoretical understanding of talent management, this paper aims to shed light on the meaning of the term ‘talent’ by answering the following question: Is talent predominantly an innate construct, is it mostly acquired, or does it result from the interaction between (specific levels of) nature and nurture components? Literature stemming from different disciplines has been reviewed to summarize the main arguments in support of each of the three perspectives. Subsequently, these arguments are mapped on a continuum ranging from completely innate to completely acquired. We argue that an organization’s position on this continuum entails important implications for its design of talent management practices, which we discuss extensively. By providing guidelines on how an organization’s talent management system can be shaped in accordance with their respective talent definition, this paper is particularly useful to HR practitioners. publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Talent — Innate or acquired? Theoretical considerations and their implications for talent management journaltitle: Human Resource Management Review articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2013.05.003 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ispartof: Human Resource Management Review vol:23 issue:4 pages:305-321 status: published

In 2006, Lewis and Heckman characterized talent management (TM) as a scientific field in its infancy. Despite a rise in the number of scientific publications on talent management in the subsequent ...