Business Intelligence: An Essential Tool in the Identification of Organizational Internal Talent - New Contributions in Information Systems and Technologies - page 88

3.3 What Is Talent?

In 2001, a team of consultants of McKinsey referred to Talent as a fundamental
condition for achieving organizational excellence, considering it a critical strategic
issue for the twenty-first century in Economics knowledge [15][16][17]. However,
given the growing interest in the concept of Talent, the lack of consistency in its
definition and conceptual limits remains a paradox [15][18].
We analyze the Talent construct in a pragmatic perspective of organizational
implementation, in terms of management practices related to its identification, based
on a complementarity bases between two opposing currents. In its genesis, one
current argued that Talent is determined mostly by innate factors [19][20] and another
for learning opportunities [21][22]. Searching for a definition of Talent, we accept the
one proposed by Axelrod, Handfield-Jones & Michaels [23] in which they refer it as
the set of a person's abilities - their attributes, knowledge, experience, intelligence,
insight, attitude, character and innate drives - including, their ability to learn and
develop, requiring the investment of their energy in the success of the organization
and aligning personal goals with the organizational ones.

Fig. 1. The integration of two main definitions in the identification of targeted internal Talent

In addition, Ulrich [24] defines talent as an equation that involves the
multiplication of three demonstration conditions - competence (knowledge, skills and
values), commitment (time and effort) and sense of contribution (relevance of the