Do Talent Management Practices Make Difference? : A Case Study of Biotechnology Start-Up Firms

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to explore talent management practices and strategies that may have direct or indirect effect on the performance of emerging firms in biotechnology industry. Specifically, differences between the practices adopted by firms with greater performance indicators and that of firms with low performance indicators are investigated. This paper also gives the details about the emerging issues and challenges in setting up a biotechnology start-up firm and how these issues and challenges are different from that of any other knowledge-based start-up firms.

The research findings are based on the information obtained by interviewing 8 representative firms. Cross-case analysis technique was used to analyze the qualitative data to explore the common management practices opted by firms with successful commercialization than that of the firms which are still in struggling phase. The study lists the high performance work practices and critical success factors in entrepreneurial setting. In a sense, the paper concludes how managing skilled labour, in an effective manner, may affect the performance of emerging biotechnology start-up firms.