Macro talent management in Russia: Addressing entangled challenges in managing talent on the country level

There has never been a tradition in Russian history over hundreds of years for entrusting the state to individuals with rare or unusual talents who have been outside the controlling power group. This stance typifies governance in Russia today. Russia needs talented people in all walks of life, but to what degree to trust them and give them scope? From a Western standpoint talent management (TM) both as a concept and practice is not at all straightforward. This is not to say that Western approaches to the study of TM in Russia are fatally flawed; rather it is necessary to balance these approaches with nuanced insights from Russia’s historical, cultural, and institutional contexts. Making use of the relatively new notion of MTM, this chapter embraces formal information on the MTM environment: demographics, immigration, labour markets, competitiveness, and education; introduces relevant international comparisons; and accompanies these data with telling contextual detail. A problematical conclusion is that Russia has yet to create a business environment that considers the under-deployment of talented individuals to be a major disadvantage to state-building.