The Challenges of Talent Management in a diverse workforce: The Case of Dubai

This paper addresses the key concept of talent management and diversity. Talent management is based on acquiring, motivating and retaining the best suited employees in line with optimal use of human resources. The Talent Management, is widely recognised in debates about managing people, although its inception dates back only to the 1990s, when McKinsey & Company published their report on ?The War for Talent? (Michaels et al., 2001). The scholarly literature on talent management started as a relatively uncomplicated debate on the ?war for talent? between corporate organisations seeking to gain a sustained competitive advantage (Chambers et al., 1998; Morris and Pinnington, 2002). In the main, talent management can be defined as the creative and competitive ways by which organisations meet their human capital needs (Tatli et al. 2012). In recent years the notion of talent management has been broadened in order to deal with issues such as talent shortages and surpluses, how talent may be located and relocated, and lastly how talent may be effectively compensated (Schuler et al., 2011; Tarique and Schuler, 2010).Skils shortages are a global phenomenon, although they impact on economies in different ways across Asia Pacific, Americas, Europe and the Middle East (Manpower, 2010). The UAE relies heavily on its expatriate workers, which has outnumbered its local workers for several decades (Shah, 2008). This is the case in the public sector and the private sector (Forstenlechner and Rutledge, 2011). The effective management of talent is seen as essential for the sustainable development of the economy. This paper will address some of the ways in which Dubai is dealing with this matter. The paper will be based on the theoretical framework and its application to the context.