Talent management in academia: the effect of discipline and context on recruitment

ABSTRACT

Although talent management is widely discussed in large for – profit organisations and multinationals, it has been little discussed in relation to higher education. This paper examines one aspect of talent management, recruitment, in academia in accounting, in two different countries, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. It frames the study around three dilemmas – transparency versus autonomy, the power of human resources versus the power of academics, and equality versus homogeneity. It considers the recruitment context and drivers, what this tells us about how talent is defined, and the insights that can be gained from comparing recruitment across different disciplines and geographical contexts. By examining recruitment in one discipline across different contexts, we show that recruitment is influenced by a complex interplay between subfield and context which can be linked to the strategic priorities of universities in the three contexts, resulting in different definitions of talent.

KEYWORDS:

• Recruitment
• talent management
• accounting
• staffing
• qualifications

Acknowledgements

The authors confirm that this sponsor had no involvement in the study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the paper; or in the decision to submit it for publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh.

2. The Universities of Dundee, Heriot-Watt, Stirling, and Strathclyde.

3. The Universities of Abertay, Glasgow Caledonian, Napier, Robert Gordon, West of Scotland and, most recently, the University of the Highlands and Islands.

4. Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, University College Dublin, National University of Ireland Galway, Dublin City University, National University of Ireland Maynooth, and the University of Limerick.

5. Departments had a variety of names. Interviews were held with the head of a department that included Accounting in its name.

6. The longest transcript was 15,838 words, the shortest 5361 words, with a median length of 8975 words and an average length of 10,008 words.

7. No further details are given as this could identify the interviewees.

8. The following codes were initially used: context, mission, ideal recruit, characteristics of recruits, qualifications, PhD, professionally qualified, job market, recent recruitment experiences, supply and demand, process, driver, job specification, research assessment, head of department, school, university, human resources.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Irish Accountants’ Educational Trust.