Winning the Talent Wars

Rapid advances in technologies have made established models of business processes and structure obsolete. Business executives, at all levels, are struggling to adapt to the new “knowledge” economy and its effect on the working environment. As a result, established organizations are struggling to make a successful transition to a twenty‐first century organisation. There is agreement that human capital – and by extension its tacit knowledge – are critical for organisations to survive this harsh transition; business leaders are struggling to look for directions. This has resulted in a concentration of attention in both business and academe on domains such as e‐learning, knowledge management, knowledge workers and virtual organisations.

The author of this new book explores these issues. Actively involved with business organisations, Tulgan tries to work out a strategy which would allow organisations to understand the human resource implications of the new economy and, more importantly, its effects on its surrounding office environment.

As the title of the text suggests, the main proposition is that business leaders need to understand and appreciate that, in the new economy, current frameworks (i.e. recruitment, training and remuneration), which have served so well for the last century, are outdated.

On the very first page, the author starts off with a real life example from his diary as a management consultant which orients the reader to the core issue of the text. Throughout the text, Tulgan uses anecdotal examples to bring to the reader’s attention the rather grim reality facing corporate USA. He very frankly states that companies in general have a problem accepting the possibility that the most talented amongst its workforce are free agents who can, will, and do move out of organisations, if they feel that they are unable to harness their full potential. The author states that this is further complicated by corporate USA’s attempts to accept a framework which can quantify and fit the un‐quantifiable: the “tacit knowledge of its employees”.

The text, by way of its anecdotes, elaborates on how organisations harness and transfer tacit knowledge using alternative forms of organisational work structures (teleworking, etc.). The author emphasises the importance of focusing on the work that has to be done rather than on the creation of a job description. Other mechanisms of enhancing organisational creativity and productivity are also discussed.

Issues surrounding the harnessing of knowledge workers are tackled by the author in seven chapters. Each chapter heading is a theme for management and if adopted together, they can become a unified strategy to create synergy from organisational human resources. However, no clear conceptual framework has been presented, nor has the unified strategy implied in the book been empirically validated. Another drawback is that, since a majority of the anecdotes are based upon US companies, the strategies suggested might not be as widely applicable in a European context.

The conclusion of the book is that, while long‐time employees (and, by extension, current management concepts and organisational structures) are essential to ensure meaningful organisational continuity, organisations should shed their fear in adopting new innovative models of empowering their employees, both full‐time and contractual, which would allow them to decide how and when to carry out the assigned responsibility.

The principal audience for this book appears to be business executives and, as such, the author has kept the text short and punchy. The text is clear, concise, free of technical jargon and has all the makings of an ideal travel companion to jet‐lagged and troubled management executives. Nevertheless, for students interested in the new economy, it is a good exposition of the trends which are likely to emerge as the dominant pattern in corporate USA. We have found this text, and the ideas expressed, influential on developing and enhancing individual insights on how to manage knowledge workers. We believe that the one key area where this book could be strengthened is by including European and Asian examples. This would of course call for a totally different level of understanding and further research into the cultural dimension.