Critical success factors, challenges and

obstacles in talent management

Marjan Maali Tafti, Mahdi Mahmoudsalehi and Mojtaba Amiri

Abstract Marjan Maali Tafti is based at

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the obstacles and challenges of talent management as well Saipa Corporation, Tehran, Iran.
as its success factors in Iranian automotive industries. Mahdi Mahmoudsalehi is
Design/methodology/approach – This research is a kind of discoverer research done by qualitative a PhD Student at the Allameh
approach. The methodology to data collection was interview and research sample was 15 manager in Tabatabai University,
automotive industries. Data analysis was carried out by the coding method, and concepts, minor and major Tehran, Iran.
contexts were extracted and lastly the conceptual framework was formed. Mojtaba Amiri is based at the
Findings – Based on the findings of the research, framework of obstacles and challenges in talent
Faculty of Management,
management was classified into four categories that are structural challenges and barriers,
University of Tehran,
environmental challenges and barriers, behavioral challenges and barriers and lastly managerial
challenges and barriers. In addition, the framework of talent management success factors were Tehran, Iran.
categorized into three main sections that are structural success factors, environmental success factors and
finally managerial success factors.
Originality/value – Problem finding of talent management in automotive industry and identifying obstacles,
challenges and success factors in talent management with qualitative approach through interviews with
experts from the Iranian industries is the research value.
Keywords Critical success factors, Talent management, Barriers and challenges
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Global changes and transformations have caused a lot of complications and movements in
business areas, so organizations should recognize their core competencies and develop
management systems to create utility, and to maintain economic value and gain sustainable
competitive advantage. Intensive competition has made it difficult to keep the competitive
advantage for a long time. On the other hand, the short life cycle of new products and models of
business requires continuous innovations. In addition, changing problem-oriented approach into
vision-oriented approach involves recognition of talents and capabilities and its application. For
example, when due to some reasons like retirement or resignation an organizational post is left
unoccupied, the senior managers find that there are few people fitting for that vacancy within
their organization, and they are not completely qualified for that job. Thus, they often have to
outsource their needs, instead of inside promotion; this not only imposes much time and cost on
the organization, but also there is a risk of not adapting to organizational culture. In this research,
the literature of talent management is studied, and success factors, barriers and challenges of
talent management implementation are identified. In recent years, human resource development
issue has been addressed in many Iranian firms and numerous organizations have conducted
studies on talent management and succession planning; however, they have not been able to
implement it completely. The aim of this study is to identify the problems of talent management in
automotive companies. The main research questions are:
RQ1. What are the problems and barriers in implementing talent management?
RQ2. What are the success factors for implementing talent management?
RQ3. How can categorize these barriers and success factors in Iranian automotive industry?

DOI 10.1108/ICT-05-2016-0036 VOL. 49 NO. 1 2017, pp. 15-21, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 0019-7858 j INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING j PAGE 15
 Literature review
Michaels et al. (2001) believe that talent is a code or a word for effective leaders and
managers that can help an organization to reach its goals. Managerial talent is a combination of a
sharp strategic mind, leadership ability, emotional maturity, communicative skills, and the ability
to attract and inspire other talented people, entrepreneurial instincts, functional skills, and the
ability to deliver results (Michaels et al., 2001). According to Williams (2000), talented people are
those who have exceptional abilities and they are successful in a range of activities or in a specific
field. The literature review shows that there are a variety of definitions about talent management.
From Schweyer’s view, talent management includes all the processes of human resource
activities, and usually refers to the sourcing, selection, deployment, socialization, maintenance
and development of talented staff. It has a cycle that includes three main fields: talent
identification and absorption, talents maintenance and talents development (Schweyer, 2004).
Strategic talent management is a process that includes systematic identification of key positions
which differently contribute to the organization’s sustainable competitive advantage.
Development of a talent pool of high potential and efficient incumbents to fill these roles, and
development of a differentiated human resource architecture to facilitate filling these
positions with competent incumbents to ensure their commitment to the organization
(Collings and Mellahi, 2009).
Global talent management is defined as organizational efforts for recruitment, selection,
development and maintenance of key talented employees in strategic positions on a global scale.
A key aspect to this definition is its concentration on the key employee group instead of
multinational ones (Scullion et al., 2010). Lewis and Heckman (2006) investigated the problems
with the definition of talent management and presented a systematic definition that concentrates
on strategic talent management, showing opportunities for future research in the field of talent
management. Khilji et al. in their research referred to the extant limitation of global talent
management by concentrating on individual and organizational factors, and presented a
conceptual framework for macro global talent management which is the activities developed to
enhance the quality and quantity of talent within and across countries and regions. They also
referred to challenges like nationality’s effects in talent mobility, and direct intervention of the
governments in the recruitment and development of national talents (Khilji et al., 2015).
Collings (2014) investigated talent management challenges and opportunities in multinational
enterprises and described how a combination of global mobility and global talent management can
help multinational enterprises to be successful; he also introduced human capital, social capital and
dynamic capabilities as suitable theories to utilize that. Tatli et al. (2013) referred to the relationship
between talent shortage and existence of talented female workers in Asia and Oceania. These
regions have a shortage of talent on the one hand, and on the other hand are facing good potential
of female talented labors. They mentioned necessity and legitimacy of attention to gender quotas as
a part of talent management strategy in these areas in order to use potentials of women to face
talent shortage (Tatli et al., 2013). Schuler et al. (2011) introduced the main forces of global talent
challenges and described human resource policies to face these challenges. They identified
dedicating insufficient time to TM by senior managers, lack of involvement of TM to the issue, lack of
willingness to acknowledge performance differences among personnel, lack of HR departments
and organizational structures as the main barriers in TM (Schuler et al., 2011).
Tarique and Schuler identified GTM challenges and categorized them into internal and external
groups. The three main external factors of GTM challenges are globalizing talent-migration
tendencies, changing demographics and gap among supply and demand. The three main
internal drivers of GTM challenges are globalization, demographics, the gap between supply and
demand, international strategic alliances and dynamic competencies. They also referred to three
main activities of strategic human resource management including talent recruitment,
maintenance and development as challenges faced by talent management in multinational
companies (Tarique and Schuler, 2010). Iles et al. (2010) proposed four-quadrant model where
there are four main perspectives on TM, which are outlined and discussed below:
1. exclusive-people: focused on “key” selected people with high performance;
2. exclusive-position: focused on right people in key roles or positions;

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3. inclusive-people: everyone seems potentially talented; and
4. social capital: focused on teams, cultures and networks (Iles et al., 2010).
Mellahi and Collings (2010) mentioned two major barriers being effective in global talent
management based on agency and bounded rationality theories. From the perspective of agency
theory, when goals and interests of global firms are not aligned, the subsidiary may undermine the
effective management of talent for self-serving reasons, so they try to keep their most talented
employees rather than allowing them to come to the attention of the headquarters or other
subsidiaries. From the perspective of bounded rationality theory decision-makers have to go
through a complicated and appalling process to fully comprehend the talent situation in an
organization, which surpasses the skills of most managers. Therefore, managers make decisions
based on insufficient amounts of information (Mellahi and Collings, 2010). Guthridge et al. (2008)
found talent management barriers include short time perspective of senior managers, insufficient
managerial involvement and commitment to developing talent, minimal collaboration and talent
sharing among business units, lack of strategic alignment between talent management strategies
and business strategies, ineffective line management, and confusion about the role of HR
(Guthridge et al., 2008). Guthridge et al. (2006) introduced insufficient managerial involvement
and commitment to developing talent time dedicated to TM by senior managers, “silo” thinking
and a lack of collaboration across the organization, lack of strategic alignment between talent
management strategies and business strategies, lack of employees’ classification as top,
average or underperforming by line managers, and lack of understanding about the key positions
as the main barriers of talent management (Guthridge et al., 2006).

Research methodology
This research was a kind of qualitative study which was done by coding methodology of qualitative
data. In accordance with the methodology and the purpose of the research, semi-structured
interviews with experts and informed specialists have been done. Therefore, qualitative data were
collected, studied and sorted according to the coding approach and content analysis. The research
population includes managers, specialists and experts from the human resource area that are fully
familiar with the talent management in automotive industry. The number of interviewees was
selected by theoretical saturation method. The sample of this study consisted of 15 interviewees,
out of which ten were human resource managers. We studied their perspective to introduce the
main talent management’s barriers, challenges and success factors. Through the analysis and
conclusion of data, concepts and categories were defined and categorized into structural,
environmental, behavioral and managerial challenges and barriers. Finally, the conceptual model of
talent management including barriers and challenges and success factors were compiled.
Qualitative collected data were analyzed by the coding method. First, concepts and categories
related to research subject were extracted by open coding method. For a careful classification of
contents in categories, each concept should have been separated, labeled and unprocessed
data were conceptualized by careful study of interview contents and records. Data collected from
interviews were codified to make similarities and differences easier to notice. In the second stage,
the most important success factor, barriers and challenges of talent management in the
automotive industry were grouped by axial coding approach. Open coding ended by indicating
concepts and categories. Then, we had categories that we should have indicated their relations.
This action was done in the axial coding stage. In open and axial coding, talent management
model in automotive industry has been developed. Selective coding used the results of previous
stages and selected the main category.

Research findings
After analyzing and coding of qualitative data, we identified the most important barriers and
challenges of talent management in automotive industry and categorized into structural,
environmental, behavioral and managerial challenges and barriers. The structural challenges and
barriers include all elements, factors and physical conditions in an organization. These
interdependent factors can be categorized as “hard” organizational elements. Therefore, when all

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 tangible and information sources are leveraged across the organization, they will be considered
as structural components which are nonliving organizational factors. The environmental
challenges are related to the external forces that exist outside an organization which surround it.
They are largely beyond the management’s control, but influence organizational performance,
and the organizational development depends on them. The behavioral challenges and barriers of
human relations in organizations include unofficial relationship that constitutes the main content of
organization. These factors are categorized as “soft” organizational elements which are less
tangible organizational factors. The managerial challenges and barriers can be considered as a
subset of behavioral challenges, but since managers’ attitude and participation has a decisive
role in implementing talent management, this category is considered separately. As mentioned in
the results the most important barriers and challenges of talent management are divided into four
categories such as structural, environmental, behavioral and managerial factors. Several factors
have been identified for each barrier and challenge categories shown in Table I.
According to analysis and coding of qualitative data, the most important talent management
success factors in automotive industry are identified and categorized into three main parts that
are structural, environmental and managerial success factors. The structural success factors
include elements, factors and physical conditions in the organization. The most important
structural success factors of talent management in automotive industry were sorted after
analyzing and coding the qualitative data. Environmental success factors are related to the
external forces that surround the organization. Managerial success factors, such as managerial
challenges and barriers, are related to human relations in organizations, especially at the
management level. The results show that the most important success factors of talent
management can be divided into three categories: structural, environmental and managerial.
Several factors have been identified for each barrier and challenge categories shown in Table II.

Table I The most important barriers and challenges of talent management

Structural challenges and Lack of integrated HR systems
barriers Lack of a competency model in organizational strategies
Lack of strategic alignment between HR strategies and business strategies
Lack of professional and specialized managers in HR field
Lack of an integrated talent management approach
Intangibility in outputs of human resource processes
Lack of suitable motivational approaches
Lack of HR departments’ competencies to address TM challenge and focus on administrative process rather than
HR development process
Poorly implemented performance management systems
Impossibility of cost–benefit analysis, especially the cost of selecting wrong people
Environmental challenges and Governance of politics and external pressures on hiring managerial positions
barriers Lack of stability in management
Governmental support and the absence of serious competition
Economic sanctions
Population and labor market saturation
Supply and demand gap
Slow movement toward privatization and globalization
Limit access to international markets
Behavioral challenges and Mental and cognitive prejudices
barriers Cultural barriers
Resistance to change among managers
Expectations among elected people
Sexual discrimination
Managerial challenges and Nepotism
barriers Lack of commitment, support and belief of the top managers
Lack of strategic perspective to human resources
Lack of positive outlook on HR among managers
Lack of involvement and cooperation among managers in implementing TM processes
Lack of understanding about the importance and significance of TM
Lack of commitment to development of employee’s capabilities and careers
Difference between talent management process and manager’s staffing and promotion decisions

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Table II The most important success factors of talent management
Structural success factors Using TM’s standard tools and processes
Creating prerequisite and supportive processes for TM
Active human resource department which implements human capital programs
Financial analysis of human resource development indicators
Integrated talent management program
Strategic alignment between HR (especially TM) strategies and business strategy
Organizational structure and hierarchy
Motivational systems based on TM process
Positive and successful experiences
Performance management based on TM process
Environmental success factors Increasing stability of management
Keeping the organization from direct intervention of the government
and external pressures on hiring and appointments
Managerial success factors Top managers belief, commitment and support
Strategic perspective on human resource development
Commitment, support and involvement of senior managers
Talent management as a strategic priority
Holistic approach to developing talent
Succession planning
Rational decision-making at the management level
Breaking down information repositories and develop collaborations

Conclusion
The literature review shows that managers and human resource experts define human talent in
relation to current and future organizational strategic goals and programs. For instance, when an
organization selects diverse and innovative strategy, human talent refers to those who have
prominent actual or potential capabilities in creativity and innovation. According to organizational
evidence, documents and results gained from interviews, Iranian automotive companies use
competency model to indicate talented people who have better performance. Competency is
defined as a combination of knowledge, personal attributes, interests, experiences and
capabilities related to the job which enables their owners to play a role above the average level.
The literature review and definitions presented by interviewees showed different definitions of
talent management. Talent management ensures managers that competent people with right
skills located suitable vacancies to reach desired business objectives. In fact, talent management
includes a complete set of processes in order to identify, employ and manage individuals to
implement business strategy successfully. These processes are categorized into talent
acquisition, talent development and talent retention.
According to most interviewee’s perspective and organizational documents, the following three
processes were mentioned as the main components of talent management:
1. Talent acquisition: talent acquisition is the process of identifying, attracting and evaluating top
talents by using assessment and development centers.
2. Talent development: after identifying potential talents, training programs are presented to
develop their competencies.
3. Talent retention: one of the problems that organizations usually face is that developed and
trained talents are attracted by competitors. Therefore, retaining systems to preserve talents
is one of the main components of talent management systems.
In “Structural challenges and barriers” section, the phrase “Lack of strategic alignment between
HR strategies and business strategies” by Riccio (2010) and Guthridge et al. (2006, 2008) has
been mentioned as “Lack of professional and specialized managers in HR field” (Schuler et al.,
2011). In addition, the concept of “Lack of integrated talent management program” is presented
under the titles “lack of employee developmental planning” (Sweem, 2009), “Succession planning
remained significant barriers” (Guthridge et al., 2008) and “lack of talent management program”
(Riccio, 2010). Similarly, the title “Lack of HR department’s competencies to address TM
challenge and focus on administrative process rather than HR development process” addresses

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 by Schuler et al. (2011) replaced the title of “governance of administrative outlook on staff’s
development”. Also, the content of “poor implementation of the process of Performance
Management” has been presented under the title “lack of tendency in managers to classify
employees into top, average and weak performance” (Guthridge et al., 2006) and “lack of
willingness to acknowledge performance variances among personnel” (Schuler et al., 2011).
In addition, the phrase “The difficulty of cost-benefit analysis, especially the cost of selecting
wrong people” has been noted by Schuler et al. (2011).
In “Environmental challenges and barriers” section, the title “Direct intervention of government and
external pressures on hiring and appointments” have replaced “direct intervention of the
governments in recruitment and development of national talents” in the literature review (Khilji et al.,
2015). Additionally, the title “Rejuvenation of population and labor market saturation” is mentioned
under the title “changing demographics.” The concept of “Supply and demand gap” also replaced
the title “Supply and demand imbalance” Schuler et al. (2011). In “Behavioral challenges and barriers”
section, the title “Cognitive Mental frameworks and cognitive prejudices” has been presented under
the titles of “silo thinking” and “Habits of mind” (Guthridge et al., 2006), “short-term perspective”
(Schuler et al., 2011; Guthridge et al., 2006, 2008) and “It is easier to buy than build suggesting that it
would be more advantageous to hire outside of the organization” by Riccio (2010). “Cultural barriers”
and “Resistance to change” have been mentioned in the literature review. The context of “Sexual
discrimination” has been addresses by Tatli et al. (2013). In “Managerial challenges and barriers”
category, “lack of commitment, support and involvement of the Top-Management” has been
presented under the titles “not dedicating time to TM by CEO’s and senior managers” (Guthridge
et al., 2006, 2008) and “senior leaders are not sufficiently involved in shaping talent-management
strategy” (Guthridge et al., 2008). “Lack of positive approach in managers HR” has been replaced by
“TM’s processes are not as important as main business processes“ by Riccio (2010) and Schuler
et al. (2011). The contents of “lack of involvement and cooperation of managers in implementing
TM’s processes” and “Ignorance of managers’ role in training and education” have been mentioned
in the literature review (Schuler et al., 2011; Guthridge et al., 2006, 2008).
In “Structural success factor” category, the contexts of “strategic alignment between HR
(especially TM) strategies and business strategies” and “organization structure and hierarchy”
have been mentioned under the titles “The best talent management plan is closely aligned with
the company’s strategic plan and overall business needs” and “flat organization and
decentralized decision-making process,” Riccio (2010). In “Managerial success factor”
category, the context of “Top-managers belief, commitment and support“ has been presented
in the research literature, Riccio (2010) and Schuler et al. (2011). The contents of “Strategic
Perspective on Human Resource Development” cited by Sweem (2009) under the titles “The
human resource departments should be involved with strategic planning and implementing
human capital programs.” The contents of “holistic approach to developing talent” by Riccio
(2010) and “Breaking down information silos and development in collaboration” by Sweem (2009)
have been mentioned under “open climate and fluent communications.”

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Further reading
Richard, S.W., Audrey, B.S. and Scott, E. (2011), “Nine best practices for effective talent management”, white
paper, Development Dimensions International Inc., available at: www.ddiworld.com
Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. (1998), Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing
Grounded Theory, Sage Publications, Inc.

Corresponding author
Mahdi Mahmoudsalehi can be contacted at: mm.salehi@yahoo.com

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