Talent management : Retaining and managing technical specialists in a technical career

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate talent management and how companies should work with talent management in order to retain and manage technical specialists in a technical career. Talent management is found to be important for modern organizations because of the advent of the knowledge economy, new generations entering the workforce and the need for businesses to become more strategic and competitive, which implies new ways of managing human capital. Furthermore, talent management is motivated by the fact that it has been found to lead to higher corporate profits when it is connected to the corporate strategy. The research method in this thesis is qualitative, and based on a case study of an organization in Norway active in the oil and gas industry, where qualitative semi-structured interviews have been performed. Moreover, the findings are compared to a set of industrial companies located in Sweden, which are similar in size to the case company and have similar needs for technical competence. The analysis of the empirical material in conjunction with the literature leads to our suggestions that there is a need for connecting the HRM practices with the corporate strategy, that the career concept needs to be redefined, and that talent management needs to integrate HR practices. Furthermore, communities of practice are suggested as a tool for developing technical specialists and rewarding them in their work. To guide organizations in executing talent management, we propose a model based in the strategy of the firm.