University Talent Management in Practice : an Evaluation of the Tenure Track System of the University of Twente

This study investigates the merit of the Tenure Track System (TTS) of the University of Twente (UT) as an approach on Talent Management (TM). It takes scientific literature on TM as well as the opinions/perceptions of the participants of the TTs into account. Furthermore, it reflects on the usefulness of the TTS for the UT. First of all, scientific literature was reviewed to define what constitutes TM and Tenure Tracks. Moreover, potential problems that might occur with TM and TTs as a form of TM were discussed. These theoretical insights served as the evaluation framework to investigate how the TTS of the UT relates to TM and how useful it is as an approach to TM. Finally, the merit of the TTS of the UT was further explored by examining how successfully the TTS was implemented. Through this comprehensive evaluation of the UT´s TTS it was possible to draw new conclusions and to give recommendations that might significantly contribute to an improvement of the TTS.