Title: Strategical agility, rigidity and paradox in talent management: SMEs in South Korea

Authors: Hyun Mi Park

Addresses: Coventry University, William Morris Building, Gosford Street, Coventry, CV1 5DL, UK

Abstract: The studies of strategic agility have been evolved by global leading companies' best/worst practices from the developed country contexts. Additionally, there is a strong encourage to investigate how organisational strategic agility is related to the human resource management (HRM) area particularly in emerging contexts. Therefore, this paper examined how exclusive talent management (TM) are strategically practiced in South Korea as one of non-Western emerging markets, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), through 55 semi-structured interviews. In fact, paradoxical South Korean context after 1997 Asian financial crisis triggered local firms to achieve strategic agility as well as rigidity. Although the firms have a good reason to adopt exclusive TM to survive in a competitive market, the rigidity of employees to adopt is found. Particularly, SMEs acknowledged the benefits of talented employees' specialised skills, strategically adopted exclusive TM with four criteria: company size, field position, competitive industry, and pivotal roles.

Keywords: talent management; TM; strategical agility; rigidity; paradox; small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; South Korea.

DOI: 10.1504/AJMSA.2022.126739

Asian Journal of Management Science and Applications, 2022 Vol.7 No.1, pp.82 - 101

Received: 29 Apr 2022
Accepted: 31 Jul 2022
Published online: 03 Nov 2022 *