Abstract

Nowadays organizations are increasingly engaged in talent management, because it allows firms to grow rapidly by leveraging on human capital. Most antecedent studies focused on expectations and motivations of talents living in developed countries. Though, a little is known about career expectations of talents in emerging economies, and whether they diverge from those of developed countries or not. However, this information might be of use for several motives. First, emerging countries have a high growth rate. Second, these talents may be effectively harnessed from domestic and non-domestic firms, depending on whether their expectations are met or not. Consistently, this study aims at exploring the career expectations of individuals in emerging countries, by capturing the heterogeneity of expectations between emerging and developed countries due to cultural, politic, economic, and religious differences. As a matter of fact, emerging countries are frequently characterized by low levels of both income and employment, differently from many developed countries. For such motives and because of the absence of valid employment alternatives, talents might be more willing to engage in entrepreneurial initiatives rather than attempting to be employed in an organization. Thus, the primary intent of this explorative study is to understand what are the factors that affect career expectations of talents in emerging countries. Consistently, a cross-sectional principal component analysis (PCA) was used for hypotheses testing. The sample refers to a set of African countries, based on data availability for 2019. Data used for the analysis are drawn from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and they refer to individual entrepreneurial behaviours and attitudes. Notably, findings show that career expectations of talents are driven by motivation and opportunity, especially in the male groups. However, the study also originally shows that the need for achievement and the willingness to stand out are the main drivers of talents’ expectations. In a nutshell, talents may prefer independence over the employment status. Implications of the findings, at a business level, suggest that companies in emerging markets should revisit their talent management strategy in order to avoid the loss of many talented employees. As instance, they should grant more independence, raise the income, and favour internal and female entrepreneurship. Thereby, the original findings of the study contribute both theoretically and practically to the research domain by specifying that career needs of talented people vary according to context and time.

摘要

如今，组织越来越多地参与人才管理，因为它允许公司通过利用人力资本来快速发展。大多数先前的研究都集中在发达国家人才的期望和动机上。然而，对于新兴经济体人才的职业期望，以及他们是否与发达国家的期望有所不同，人们知之甚少。然而，这些信息可能有多种用途。一是新兴国家增速高。其次，这些人才可能会被国内和非国内企业有效利用，这取决于他们的期望是否得到满足。一贯地，本研究旨在探索新兴国家个人的职业期望，通过捕捉由于文化、政治、经济和宗教差异而导致的新兴国家和发达国家之间期望的异质性。事实上，与许多发达国家不同，新兴国家经常以低收入和低就业为特征。出于这样的动机，并且由于缺乏有效的就业选择，人才可能更愿意参与创业计划，而不是试图在组织中受雇。因此，这项探索性研究的主要目的是了解影响新兴国家人才职业期望的因素是什么。一致地，横截面主成分分析（PCA）用于假设检验。根据 2019 年的数据可用性，该样本是指一组非洲国家。用于分析的数据来自全球创业监测（GEM），它们指的是个人创业行为和态度。值得注意的是，调查结果表明，人才的职业期望是由动机和机会驱动的，尤其是在男性群体中。然而，该研究最初也表明，对成就的需求和脱颖而出的意愿是人才期望的主要驱动因素。简而言之，人才可能更喜欢独立而不是就业状态。调查结果在业务层面的影响表明，新兴市场的公司应重新审视其人才管理战略，以避免大量优秀员工的流失。例如，他们应该给予更多的独立性，增加收入，并支持内部和女性创业。从而，