The Context Matters to the Exclusive Talent Management: How to Measure and Pay in South Korea

Talent Management (TM) has been derived from Western, mainly the US and there are gaps between westernized TM format and contexts of non-Western countries when they practice Western-format TM. Therefore, this article aims to explore South Korean-style local TM practices through a view of Resource-Based View. The local practices are also compared to foreign firms in South Korea in four areas: talent identification via performance evaluation system, South Korean style payment structure to include performance-related pay dispersion, non-monetary rewarding and training and development. This article conducted 55 semi-structured interviews from employees who are working for local and foreign companies in South Korea. TM practices in large local firms were more discriminative, and monetary focused rewards than foreign firms. Talent development programmes (e.g., a job rotation) were not practiced in local firms but in foreign firms. The TM practices are influenced by the local context and the traditional human resource management philosophies.