Protocols for Identification

The equitable identification of youth from all cultural, linguistic, and economic groups for gifted programming is a longstanding and tragic problem in gifted education. Many factors contribute to fallible, discriminatory identification practices, including identification based on manifest gifted behaviors alone (as opposed to gifted potential), on high cut-off scores on nationally normed instruments that yield differential results, and on exclusionary procedures where students must meet several criteria for identification or pass through a nomination gate for consideration. This chapter provides guidance for addressing access, equity, and missingness of underserved students in gifted education. Emphasis is placed on talent development, substantial changes to identification and programming, policy, and urgency to address systemic racism as steps critical to developing equitable, inclusive, socially just, and effective gifted education programming.

Applying Diversity-Intelligent Organizational Strategies for Competitive Advantage

Competitive advantage is attained through talent development and leadership. Talented employees seek career advancement, change, and success. Organization leaders must integrate all employees into their strategic plans and can no longer exclude talented, diverse individuals. Key diversity improvement themes are revealed in this chapter to help leaders focus on areas within the organization to apply diversity intelligent strategies and eliminate institutional barriers that limit the success of diverse employees. Sustaining competitive advantage requires dedicated efforts of executive leaders in organizations.

Tools for Managing Purpose

In order to successfully implement management by missions (MBM), it is necessary to redesign “traditional” management tools—typically grounded in an MBO philosophy—so that they are oriented toward the corporate purpose. In this chapter, we discuss how to do this on five basic management areas: strategic planning, deployment of objectives, missions’ scorecard, talent development and performance appraisal.

The Limits of Management by Objectives

Many companies today experience a critical strategic contradiction. Their corporate purpose and values have evolved into what could be described as a humanistic vision while, at the same time, their management systems, mostly built around management by objectives (MBO), are designed to maximize shareholder value. Everything—customer service, talent development, even their philanthropy—is a means to increase profit. The problem is not about the objectives themselves, but rather their widespread misuse through the MBO system. Judging by the results of four decades of research, MBO has not been able to bring employees’ full potential into play. In this chapter, we analyze the limits of management by objectives and their consequences at organizational and personal levels.

Recognizing and Developing STEM Talent Among Diverse Populations

STEM talent is often overlooked in underrepresented students resulting in limited opportunities to increase STEM interest and talent inside or outside of school settings. Academically qualified underrepresented students are less likely to be recommended for advanced placement STEM courses causing a racial divide and contributing to a lack of belonging in these courses. Methods to encourage STEM talent development and persistence in students from underrepresented populations include frontloading talent development interventions, creating afterschool or informal STEM programs, providing enrichment opportunities for highly capable students, and creating equitable access to advanced courses. This chapter presents the characteristics of STEM talent in underrepresented populations and strategies to identify high potential students, provides frontloading examples to develop STEM talent, offers examples of effective programming, and suggests instructional strategies to encourage STEM talent development in diverse populations.

Mediating Role of Demographic Variables in the Relationship between Talent Development Practices and Employees’ Performance

Current study aims to identify the mediating role of demographic variables in the relationship between talent development practices and the employees’ performance. The data was collected from 660 employees from hotel industry across North India, including budget and chain hotels. Partial regression analysis, was used to analyse the data. Perceived effectiveness of all five Talent development practices namely; Employee Welfare and Compensation, Training & Development, Career Advancement and Planning, and Performance Appraisal except work life balance, was found to be positively and significantly related to the Performance of Hotel employees based on their accomplishment of targets, on time, and overall performance. The study concluded that there is no significant mediating effect of demographic variables on the relationship between effectiveness of Talent development practices and performance of employees in hotels.