Talent management practices in Italy – implications for human resource development

Many companies have implemented talent management systems in recent years, and the issue has lately been subject to the attention of scientific literature, from different theoretical perspectives. In particular, HRD literature advanced few critical perspectives on talent management, discussing its real impact on HRD practices. This article reports the results from case studies on four Italian companies, focusing the managerial practices they implemented for managing talent. The results show that, in the Italian context, talent is managed for very different organizational objectives, with the general aim to foster a segmented approach to the workforce and to commit top and line managers to HRD activities. The results are compared with existing literature, and both implications for HRD practice and HRD theory are highlighted.