Talent Status, Ambiguity, and Early Career Programs

Abstract

Adopting an identity work perspective, we focus on the employee experience of talent management. More specifically, we explore the ambiguities that talents in an early-career program encountered in connection to their talent status, and the identity work tactics they used to make sense of their talent status and construct coherent, stable and valued identities amidst ambiguity. Drawing on qualitative interview data from a large Swedish MNC, this study contributes by identifying three aspects of talent status in relation to which talents encounter ambiguity (role, responsibility and status). Furthermore, our findings suggest that ambiguity about the implications of talent status leads talents to engage in identity work that results in positive outcomes for both the organization and the individual in terms of desirable behaviours such as hard work and focusing on learning and development.