The role of talent management and its outcomes to achieve sustainable competitive advantage: a critical investigation in Saudi Arabian oil and gas organisations

Abstract

This Research investigates the concept of talent management (TM) practices in oil and gas industry. In addition, this research investigates TM relationship with internal organisational factors including leadership, organisational culture, employer branding, rewards system. This Research investigates that effect TM implementation on TM outcomes, which includes employee attitudes (commitment, satisfaction, engagement and motivation) and How can TM achieve sustainable competitive advantage in oil and gas organisations. Despite the increasing number of TM adoptions in various organisations in recent years, this research found that TM practices are still in the early stages of development with a lack of effective framework which required further development. The literature review identified the gaps in TM literature; prompting the development of a framework for understanding the relationship between TM, its outcomes and internal factors, which are critical for the effective TM implementation Accordingly, TM framework was developed to address the key shortcomings of existing TM practices in the oil and gas organisations and to provide practical guidelines to academics and practitioners. This research is supported by two major theories including Resource-Based View (RBV) theory and SET (Social Exchange Theory). RBV is used for explaining how internal resources (talented human resources) could induce competitive advantage and improve organisational performance. SET is used for analysing the relationship between the employees and the organisation. This research adopted an interpretivist research philosophy along with the case study of the oil and gas organisations in Saudi Arabia. A two-stage empirical study employing sequential mixed methods of data collection and analysis was adopted in this research. A series of 26 semi-structured qualitative interviews from diverse managerial levels from various oil and gas organisations who have thorough knowledge and experience of TM practices was conducted. In addition, a quantitative “survey” with 417 “talented employees “in oil and gas organisations. This research will use statistical techniques for analysing the data. The data collected from the survey will be input into IBM SPSS Statistics for analysis, while the qualitative data will be analysed using Microsoft Excel using descriptive statistics. The analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data has identified that TM practises can result in effective talent outcomes including increased employee commitment, motivation, satisfaction and performance and efficiency, which would result to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. The relationship was identified between TM practices, talent outcomes (employee’s attitudes) and organisational outcomes. This research also reflected that it is important to identify the most important the influencing factors of TM in organisations, so that TM implementation is effectively and efficiently managed across the organisations. The main contribution to the knowledge and practical arena is the development of a TM framework for the oil and gas organisations, supported by practical guidelines for its effective implementation. This research has identified that effective implementation of TM practices can lead achieve sustainable competitive advantage. A key limitation of the research was identified as the nature and distribution of the sample population. The Researcher recommends that TM practises should be aligned with organisational strategy and must be continuously updated according to the changes in the internal and external environments (with respect to organisations) in order to improve sustainable competitive advantage. The Researcher recommends that future research should focus on evaluating the relationship between the TM and other internal and external organisational factors, which leads to the better understanding of issues pertaining to TM implementation in the oil and gas organisations.