- Title
- Talent and age: how do Human Resource manager meanings of talent influence their perceptions of older workers?
- Creator
- Hessell, Timothy John Field
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- The business world has long held the view that talent, particularly over the shorter term, is vital to maximising organisation performance. Over the past 30 years large companies have positively embraced talent management initiatives as a critical contributor to business performance although empirical evidence supporting this claim is debatable. Corporate talent management initiatives have also failed to significantly improve workplace diversity. HR managers believe talent to be a scarce resource whilst struggling to define what it means. Whether the proliferation in corporate talent programmes might be associated with a negative Australian business view of the older worker is worthy of exploration. Little research exists analysing how HR managers understand talent within their personal work environments and the organisation factors that may influence their talent understanding. There also exists very little talent, diversity or older worker literature examining older worker value within the context of organisation talent meanings. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how HR managers, within their work environments, understand talent and how this influences their perceptions of the older worker. Population ageing is recognised as a mega-trend of this century with major anticipated social and economic ramifications. The Australian Federal Government, in recognising this trend, finds itself with a major policy problem within the workplace, trying to reverse previous practice of encouraging older workers to leave the labour market for the benefit of the younger worker. The Australian Government is now focused on encouraging older workers to continue working. However, despite the changing older worker value political rhetoric, within the Australian workplace, older workers have a negative image with evidence of workplace discrimination and barriers in hiring decisions. Simplistic negative older worker stereotype frameworks have largely been adopted to explain a business reluctance to increase the mix of older workers within the workforce. Such an approach ignores the possibility of broader institutional factors influencing perceptions of the older worker. The adoption of talent management programmes within large Australian based corporations represents a case in point. Eighteen senior HR executives working in large organisations operating within Australia were interviewed for this thesis as part of a grounded theory research approach. The industries involved spanned financial services, technology, medical services, manufacturing and distribution, tertiary education and professional services. A triangulation method was adopted for the study. This consisted of the afore-mentioned semi-structured interviews and an examination of the annual company reports of the HR interviewee organisations plus a review of trade journals focused on talent and diversity management. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The thesis finds that institutional factors play a more significant role in HR manager talent meaning than previous studies realise. The major finding is that HR managers’ perceptions of talent reflect a particular institutional logic perspective. This finding is presented as having negative implications for older worker employability. A model is developed to explain how HR managers understand talent as they do and its negative consequences for the older worker. The thesis highlights ageism may be more institutionalised than is currently understood.
- Subject
- talent; talent management; human resource management; diversity; age; older worker; resource based view; institutional logics
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1426826
- Identifier
- uon:38477
- Rights
- Copyright 2021 Timothy John Field Hessell
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 275 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |