The semantic emptiness of talent and the accidental ontology of talent management

Abstract

The ontology of talent management and the semantic emptiness of talent is my focus in this chapter. From an interdisciplinary perspective that draws on methods and insights from cognition, social psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and sociology, I will demonstrate how a lack of semantic clarity in talent management in fact is a semantic emptiness and represents an ontological problem that questions the very existence of talent in the actual world. The implications of the semantic emptiness of talent has created an accidental ontology of talent management and led to a significantly high subjective bias and inadequacy in talent management, particularly in talent recruitment, causing considerable failure in companies’ talent management.