Middle managers as key talent management stakeholders: Navigating paradoxes
基于147份访谈，研究揭示了中层管理者在人才管理中面临的短期与长期、职能与组织两个关键悖论，并归纳出他们应对这些悖论的不同类型，为理解中层管理者在人才管理中的角色提供了新视角。
Abstract Middle managers are critical in talent management practice. Yet, their commitment to enacting organisational strategies and policies is often limited given their multiplicity of responsibilities and tasks beyond talent management. Taking a paradox lens and a multi‐stakeholder perspective, we draw from 147 interviews with middle managers, HR leaders and talents to unpack two key paradoxes when managing talent: a short‐term–long‐term paradox and a function–organisation paradox. Our research reveals a range of defensive and proactive responses to these paradoxes, which leads us to develop a typology of middle manager approaches navigating paradoxes in talent management. This typology depicts features, tensions and examples of middle managers' approach to managing talent. We introduce the extent of intradepartmental involvement and interdepartmental collaboration as key features and illustrate spatial and temporal tensions underlying paradoxes. We conclude with implications of the (in)effective management of paradoxes in a talent context.