ABSTRACT
No subject in the past 15 years has received as much attention in the human resource management literature as ‘talent management’. There is a cavalcade of literature produced by eminent scholars and experts like Ulrich (1989, 1996, 2005), Pfeffer (1998), Woodruffe (1999), Barner (2000), Michaels, HandfieldJones and Axelrod (2001), Pucik (1996, 2005,) Sullivan (2004a), Meisinger (2009), Berger and Berger (2004), Rothwell (2005), Lawler III (2008) and Cappelli (2008) on what organizations should do to attract, hire and retain talent. Based on his wealth of experience, Welch in his book, Winning (2005), has also written about the practical approach to hiring, developing and retaining great people. All the literature recognizes that talent provides companies with a competitive advantage, and it shares a common concern not only that talent is scarce, but also that most companies are not doing enough to manage and retain what they have. As the greatest source of competitive advantage for any organization, (Pfeffer, 1998), human resources deserve the attention and time of managers more than any other organizational resource or asset. This chapter attempts to define the scope of the war for talent, explains what talent and talent management actually mean and identifies the cause of the talent scarcity, particularly in Africa despite its high rate of unemployment. Finally, it provides a synopsis of the subsequent chapters in the book.
