In the increasingly global labour market, nations, regions and cities compete for talent to deliver sustainable economic growth and development. Thus, how regional policy makers and stakeholders can effectively attract talent and harness and optimise talent when it arrives in a region is a key question for research.
The importance of global mobility is reflected in the increased number of peer reviewed journal articles over the past 50 years (Baruch et al, 2016, Caligiuri & Bonache, 2016, Tung, 2016). Evans & Lanvin, 2016, p. 62 report
Mobility is not just a fact but a major economic benefit. Mobility is a crucial tool to address the challenges of demography and skills shortages and the needs for a diverse workforce, helping countries to flourish... but even more than this mobility, it is clear, helps to develop talent,... talent mobility fosters the creation of knowledge- a determinant of innovation.
The aim of this paper is to review the theoretical frameworks underpinning international mobility and develop some linkages of international mobility for the competitiveness of countries and regions.
Recognition of the importance of integrating global mobility and global talent management for organisations is evidenced in the literature (Caligiuri & Bonache, 2016, Cerdin & Brewster, 2014, Collings, 2014,). A limitation of this work is that it has largely focussed on the strategic deployment of company assigned expatriates and the organisational level. Similarly the self-initiated expatriation literature has largely focussed on individual experiences as opposed to strategies employed to attract talent and enhance the effect of talent when it arrives in a country. (Doherty et al, 2013, Al Ariss & Crowley-Henry, 2013). In order to broaden the discussion and reflect the complexities of managing talent in today’s global labour market Khilji et al, (2015) propose a definition of macro GTM as:
“The activities that are systematically developed by governmental and nongovernmental organisations expressly for the purpose of enhancing the quality and quantity of talent within and across countries and regions to facilitate innovation and competitiveness of their citizens and corporations”. P. 237.
Within this MGTM discussion is the central role that many believe cities and regions can play to the augmentation of national competitiveness. This is due to a number of factors including size and scale of a region or city coupled with fiscal and economic autonomy, which may allow for greater agility in terms of developing, customising, implementing and reviewing talent attraction polices and processes (Evans & Lanvin, 2016).
The purpose of this research is to investigate how regional policy makers and stakeholders can effectively attract, harness and optimise talent when it arrives in a region. The research is based on the following research question:
How do successful regions attract talented individuals and translate that underlying advantage into creative economic outcomes? (Florida, 2000, Lawton Smith et al, 2005).
The paper draws on the talent management, expatriation and global mobility literature. It also explores a cross disciplinary perspective and adopts ideas from economic geography and fields such as innovation and knowledge management (Khilji et al, 2015).
