The Role of Universities in Shaping Talents—The Case of the Czech Republic, Poland and Ukraine

Abstract

Talents are seen as unique strategic resources that are essential to achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Organizations use TM to source and maintain a high quality and quantity of talents. Despite numerous research and development of practice in this area, insufficient skills of the staff are still underlined, and an unexplored area in this regard is the support for talent development, prior to the employment of employees (i.e., at the stage of their education). There are numerous studies on TM in universities, but they cover all aspects of TM aimed at university staff. There is no research on supporting the talents of students as future employees. Meanwhile, universities “shape” the future staff and from this place employees identified as talented or with great potential are recruited. In connection with the identified gap, the question was asked whether and to what extent universities and educational entities should be involved in discovering and developing talents for the future needs of the economy. The aim of the article was to check how students perceive their future (i.e., their vision of life), how much of it is related to their future job, and how they see universities as an environment to support their talents. The study used the questionnaire-based survey-CAWI (computer assisted web interview) technique. The research was conducted in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Ukraine. The results of the research show that the support of talent development by universities is not sufficient, and the majority of students (despite the fact that the research was conducted in the last semesters of studies) do not have clearly defined goals and methods of achieving them.