<p>Globalisation has brought on dynamic markets and competition, and with that obliged companies to focus on long-term strategies and a greater focus on attracting, developing and retaining its employees. The present hunt for talent can be entitled as talent management, a concept that nowadays cannot be avoided. Talent management evidently not only affects companies, but also the newly graduates that are about to be employed. Students within business and economics are one affected group, since there is an increased competition for the most talented students within that field. Hence, it also concern different universities and Business Schools that offer education within the field as they are expected to provide students with certain skills before entering the working life. This leads us to an investigation of the following problem statement:</p><p>How could a business student become more employable and how does a Business School respond to the requirements of the companies in the view of the war for talent?</p><p>The main purpose with this study is therefore to obtain a comprehension of how newly graduates from Umeå School of Business (USBE) can become increasingly attractive among large organisations within the business world. In this qualitative study we wish to gain a deeper understanding of abovementioned issues and organisations’ talent management, and therefore we have used a hermeneutic perspective.</p><p>Consequently, we have performed telephone interviews with people that are well acquainted with recruitment and human resource related issues at large companies in Sweden. The eight interviewed companies include; Öhrlings PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Sony Ericsson, Volvo Group, Nobia and Nordea, as well as three companies who requested to be held anonymous and are thereby ficticiously named: HRCompetence, CapitalBank and Consultancy AB. In addition, we arranged group interviews with personell at USBE to get an insight of whether the Business School is focusing on facets that are valued by the organisations.</p><p>The scientific approach has been deductive, and the results from the empiricism has therefore been analysed together with recognised theories. The main theories used in this study regards Human Resource Management, Talent Management, Employment and Higher Education Institutions which leads us into Branding.</p><p>The results of the research show that students can become more employable by developing certain characteristics and competences. The most important ones are: driving force, education, work experience, activities in parallel to studies, international experience and good grades. When it comes to the Business School and in this case USBE, it can respond to companies’ requirements by most importantly increasing its corporate and community relations and increase its marketing in order to strengthen its brand. This could be done through providing internships, develop the alumni network, find alternative channels to corporate and community relations and marketing and engaging in internal marketing.</p>

Taking into account the rapidly changing of the environment nowadays and the necessity of being different between organizations, this paper tries to show how to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in companies, through talented people using talent management strategies. Here is included all theoretical framework where we will explain our understanding of talent management, talented people and the creativity as a talent. This framework gives us the tools needed to be able to analyse a real talent management strategy. During the analysis we will discover that a talent management strategy has to be fitted with the corporate strategy and with the corporate culture and also, that there are infinite ways to develop the talent management activities, it depends on the organization which develops it. For instance we are going to study two companies, Zerogrey and Google, which are very different between them but both of them have a talent management strategy.

In todays business environment there is an increasing recognition that human resources are a valuable asset to distinguish a company from its competitors. This tendency, in combination with increasing job mobility among employees and an ongoing demographic change, has turned the labour market into a competitive arena. Employer Branding and Talent-Relationship-Management are two fairly new concepts in the area of Human Resource Management, which have the aim to differentiate companies on the labour market and to support them effectively in their endeavour to approach, acquire and retain the most talented employees. In this study, the internal and external determinants, which form an appealing employer brand are investigated. A conceptual framework is first constructed and later modified in the lights of the empirical findings gained through four conducted interviews with four large organizations. In contrast, a deeper insight in the prioritisation of different TRM elements is gained by means of a quantitative study among university graduates and international scholarship holders. The major findings outline that there is a continuous challenge in creating a level of consistency in favour of a credible employer brand message. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that a change or adoption of the employer brand in the short-term is difficult due to the culture and values of the respective organization. In addition, the employer brand plays an important role in preventing unplanned impulses, which result out of negative impacts from the business environment. The comparison of the major findings among the different groups within the quantitative study shows that the instruments ‘Information about vacancies’, ‘Scholarship’, ‘Company Workshops’ as well as ‘Exclusive Information’ are among the most valued ones in comparison with ‘Periodical Services’, ‘Personalized Websites’ or ‘Giveaways’, which most respondents do not perceive as interesting.

Globalisation has brought on dynamic markets and competition, and with that obliged companies to focus on long-term strategies and a greater focus on attracting, developing and retaining its employees. The present hunt for talent can be entitled as talent management, a concept that nowadays cannot be avoided. Talent management evidently not only affects companies, but also the newly graduates that are about to be employed. Students within business and economics are one affected group, since there is an increased competition for the most talented students within that field. Hence, it also concern different universities and Business Schools that offer education within the field as they are expected to provide students with certain skills before entering the working life. This leads us to an investigation of the following problem statement: How could a business student become more employable and how does a Business School respond to the requirements of the companies in the view of the war for talent? The main purpose with this study is therefore to obtain a comprehension of how newly graduates from Umeå School of Business (USBE) can become increasingly attractive among large organisations within the business world. In this qualitative study we wish to gain a deeper understanding of abovementioned issues and organisations’ talent management, and therefore we have used a hermeneutic perspective. Consequently, we have performed telephone interviews with people that are well acquainted with recruitment and human resource related issues at large companies in Sweden. The eight interviewed companies include; Öhrlings PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Sony Ericsson, Volvo Group, Nobia and Nordea, as well as three companies who requested to be held anonymous and are thereby ficticiously named: HRCompetence, CapitalBank and Consultancy AB. In addition, we arranged group interviews with personell at USBE to get an insight of whether the Business School is focusing on facets that are valued by the organisations. The scientific approach has been deductive, and the results from the empiricism has therefore been analysed together with recognised theories. The main theories used in this study regards Human Resource Management, Talent Management, Employment and Higher Education Institutions which leads us into Branding. The results of the research show that students can become more employable by developing certain characteristics and competences. The most important ones are: driving force, education, work experience, activities in parallel to studies, international experience and good grades. When it comes to the Business School and in this case USBE, it can respond to companies’ requirements by most importantly increasing its corporate and community relations and increase its marketing in order to strengthen its brand. This could be done through providing internships, develop the alumni network, find alternative channels to corporate and community relations and marketing and engaging in internal marketing.

Företag blir alltmer multinationella och detta har gjort dem beroende av en mer globaliserad syn på företagsstyrning. Därför fokuserar företag idag på att hitta förmågor och talanger som kan leda under globala förhållanden. Denna studie behandlar ämnet Global Talent Management (GTM), en personalplaneringsprocess som syftar till att skapa en grupp medarbetare med särskild god prestationsförmåga och hög potential, för att vidare utveckla dessa till att förverkliga företagets strategier. Prestationsmätning har använts sedan länge av företag men när det kommer till potential finns svårigheter i att kvantifiera detta då det är något som lätt blir subjektivt. Otydligheten som detta problem ger speglar sig även i hur transparenta företagen är med processerna av GTM i organisationen.Syftet med denna studie blir därför att kartlägga hur svenska företag använder GTM med särskilt fokus på variabeln potential och hur transparenta de är med sitt arbete i organisationen Syftet hoppas infrias genom att studera fyra multinationella företag med rötter inom den svenska servicesektorn. Detta har gjorts genom personintervjuer med medarbetare på respektive HR-avdelning. Studien har även gått djupare inom två av företagen då författarna intervjuat en mellanchef som plockat ut en talang samt talangen själv.Resultatet som fanns var att GTM är en process som skiljer sig från företag till företag men vad som gör det framgångsrikt är en tydlighet i arbete med processerna både angående potential och transparens. Då detta leder till en tydligare koppling till företagets strategier.

Contemporary studies in international management field conceptualize subsidiaries as semi-autonomous entities. By involving in entrepreneurial undertakings and strategic activities, subsidiaries could contribute strategic value to parent multinational corporation (MNC). Distinguishing from previous researches derived from entrepreneurship theory and done by Birkinshaw and his colleagues, this study incorporated human capital theory and knowledge-based view (KBV) to fulfill the existing research gap and enlarged our understanding of subsidiary entrepreneurship. This research proposed two models to unlock and testify the underexplored phenomenon of subsidiary entrepreneurship. In the first model, this research incorporated human capital management in MNCs context and testified that not merely top management team (TMT) entrepreneurial leadership and subsidiary entrepreneurial culture were critical antecedents of subsidiary¡¦s strategic initiative, but the human resource management (HRM) practices of subsidiary talent management played an important mediator to generate the entrepreneurial system. In the second model, this study demonstrated the cross-field integration and synthesis of entrepreneurial literatures, human capital theory and knowledge-based view and expressed a more comprehensive illustration of strategic entrepreneurship. This study certified that absorptive capacity could facilitate subsidiary¡¦s entrepreneurial culture and further enhance subsidiary¡¦s strategic initiative. Moreover, subsidiary¡¦s practices of talent management could facilitate its absorptive capacity and further contribute to subsidiary¡¦s strategic outputs. By analyzing the empirical data collected from 202 MNCs¡¦ foreign subsidiaries in Asian area, this study testified that the subsidiaries which could contribute strategic value creation for parent MNCs should equip multilayer of initiative-takings: the local distinctive capability, market initiative and knowledge outflow. Furthermore, the HRM practices of talent management in subsidiary played critical mediating role on both the development of organizational capability, improvement of absorptive capacity and the enhancement of subsidiary strategic initiative. TMT entrepreneurial leadership was the core engine which could activate subsidiary¡¦s mechanisms to facilitate the activities of strategic value creations.

The globalisation of economy, increase of employees’ mobility, the forthcoming shortage of people next 10 years and, hence, war for talented people are some of the most important problems of corporations today. This thesis has a purpose to show systematic picture of the organisation, which will be named as Talented Organisation, with appropriate conditions for having talented people within and developing their talents. Some assumption of the research discussed in this paper are about the talented people themselves as special, difficult to work with, but interesting for any organisation. They can create some problems for leadership and co-workers and at the same time represent the most important source of ideas and to be essential resource. It will be described the strategy for gaining the Talented Organisation which will facilitate the process of hiring talented people as well as will promote the utilisation of inner organisational potential: identifying, breeding, nurturing and retaining of talented people.

Talent management has been a heating-up topic in recent years. It has a positive effect on the ability to create a compelling, productive, and valued enterprise for all stakeholders — employees, customers, business partners and investors. Moreover, talent management facilitated talent flexibility and enables the rapid growth of the business, ensuring rapid alignment with the requirements established by business leaders as the company evolved. Meanwhile, the importance for a company to attract and retain a high-quality workforce is moving into the boardroom agenda, more and more attention is pain on this acute topic. In this thesis, we are doing the research on how to build up a talent factory within the company – how to recruit the most outstanding people to meet the business needs, how to maximize the potential of employees, how to put the right people in the right position and finally how to keep the best people in the company. In order to achieve it, we conducted our research from different methodologies (literatures, case studies, interviews) to find the answer our research question: is talent management a science or an art in order to build up a talent factory? At the end, we came out of our own understanding about the talent management and the accommodations of building up a talent factory.

There is a numerous of literature on Key Account Management but there is a lack of empirical research supporting the literature, especially regarding the implementation process. This study investigates five companies according to how they manage their customer relationships with main focus on their key customers. The study is based on existing KAM literature and also involves additional factors; change management and global talent management. The purpose of the study is to investigate how KAM can be more successfully implemented in Swedish companies in IT and management industry. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach and the interviews were held with Top management at five Swedish IT and management companies in Växjö. The findings show new insights into KAM implementation; Change management and Global talent management were shown to have a direct effect on the success of an implementation, which the existing theory of KAM is not emphasizing. The result of the study is visualized in a model at the end of the study.

Globalisation radically changed the way in which talent is sourced, organised and managed. The chemical industry as competitor in the global landscape is increasingly faced with challenges to attract and retain talent. The success and global competitiveness of the chemical industry largely depends on its employees, their ideas and intellectual resources. Highly talented employees are targeted by competitor companies and head hunters with substantial financial incentives and benefits. Leadership plays a vital role in creating a stimulating, empowered and challenging work environment that will attract and retain employees. Employees need to experience a sense of meaning, have the resources to do their jobs and most importantly, need to be empowered beyond being asked to meet performance goals. The aim of this study was to determine if a relationship existed between leadership empowerment behaviour, psychological empowerment, work engagement and turnover intention in a chemical industry. The study secondly examined whether leadership empowerment behaviour affected turnover intention via psychological empowerment and thirdly the study investigated if leadership empowerment behaviour affected work engagement via psychological empowerment. A random cross-sectional design with paper-based surveys as the primary method of data collection was used to accomplish the research objectives. The measuring battery for this study consisted of the Leader Empowering Behaviour Questionnaire (LEB), the Measuring Empowerment Questionnaire (MEQ), the Work Engagement Scale (WES) and the Turnover Intention Scale (TIS). The simulation and statistical analysis was carried out using the Statistical Program for the Social Sciences IBM SPSS version 21 and Mplus. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) which is theory driven was used in the study. The results showed that a significant relationship existed between leadership empowerment behaviour, psychological empowerment, work engagement and turnover intention. Regression analysis indicated that leadership empowerment behaviour had significant predictive value towards psychological empowerment and work engagement. The results showed that leadership empowerment behaviour did not affect turnover intention via psychological empowerment, but rather had a direct effect on employee’s turnover intention. The results further showed that psychological empowerment did have an indirect effect on the relationship between leadership empowerment behaviour and work engagement. The results indicated that it would be worthwhile if organisations develop leader’s competence and skills to empower their workforces. This would lead to higher levels of psychological empowerment, work engagement and retention of talent. Recommendations for future research were made. / MA (Industrial Psychology), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013