Talent Management Challenges: A Comparison Study between Local and Foreign Firms in South Korea

Abstract

The different institutional contexts in which business practice talent management (TM) lead scholars to challenge the validity of the standardised global best practices. This paper identified three types of obstacles (internal and external, and strategic talent management) to pursue effective talent management in firms in South Korea using an institutional theory lens. Mixed methods approach was utilised: 55 semi-structured interviews from CEO levels to general employees from South Korean and non-South Korean employees, as well as 161 survey from local and foreign firms. Contrary to expectations, cultural obstacles were weakly related to talent management implementation, whereas less internationalised HRM practices strongly hinder the effective talent management implementation. It reveals that firms in South Korea have been in the process of decoupling its traditional organisational culture. Additionally, this study shows the faced challenges are different according to the firm ownership in the South Korean context, the concept of homogeneity is rejected. In particular, collectivism is only shown in local firms as a main obstacle. These fresh evidences guide future comparative TM research direction, between Western and non-Western emerging countries.