The challenges of finding talent in pharmaceutical MNEs - Essay Example

Powell and Lubitsh (2007) conjecturally pointed out that talented human resource pool is the supportive pillar for organizations and organizations also know the fact that developing talent can benefit them in long term manner. Collings and Mellahi (2009) highlighted the importance of finding right talent for MNEs. According to these research scholars, MNEs maintains a large portfolio of business spanning in different countries and they need the intellectual and participatory help from its employees in order to incorporate innovation and adapt to changing environment.

In addition, Cappelli (2008) also stated the same views; they claimed that if employees failed in their job, it means some parts of organization also fail. Therefore, finding appropriate talent is the major and minor premise in developing and retaining talent. Schuler et al. (2011) claimed that the talent challenges have become a significant human resource issue for global firms. The biggest problem is whether the organization is able to get the right people in the right place at the right time.

Collings and Mellahi (2009) suggested that MNEs could not find their most talented employees and where they are located around the world. Abbasi et al. (2010) stated that talented human capital is the most organic and living asset for organization and there is no doubt that a firm can achieve competitive advantage by using the talented human capital. Abbasi et al. (2010) concentrated their study on pharmaceutical industry and came to the conclusion that finding talent in pharmaceutical industry is not an easy task.

According to them, pharmaceutical industry is a sensitive industry in terms knowledge integration or technology integration. Developing a medicine needs sheer amount scientific knowledge and natural talent for innovation and unfortunately, very few pharmaceutical companies have the opportunity to access talented human resource pool (Abbasi et al., 2010). According to Richard (2001), number of pharmaceutical MNEs has been increased in recent times due to increase in merger and acquisition activities.

As result of this industry boom, need for talent has increased manifold for pharmaceutical MNEs in order to ensure smooth operation. Increasing labour market demand is cause of concern for pharmaceutical MNEs and interesting fact is that, McAlearney (2006) classified pharmaceutical industries as late adapter contemporary human resource management activities (HRM) such as training and development, global talent management (GMT) etc. In such context, it will be challenging for pharmaceutical MNEs to meet the labour market demand for talented professionals.

Although, topic like ‘finding talent in pharmaceutical industry’ is exciting one but surprisingly very few researchers have tried to shed light on the topic from literary viewpoint. Apart from the research work of Abbasi et al. (2010), literature on “talent management in pharmaceutical Multinational Enterprise (MNE) is pretty scarce hence in this paper, the researcher will try shed some