Introduction: International talent management research – a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach

International talent management has become an important, and even critical topic for scholarly discussion, policy debates and the business community. Talent management has emerged as a core rhetoric in the domains of contemporary human resource management and people management, driven primarily by the experience of the phenomenon in the business world (Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2015). In tandem, the notion of talent management has become a legitimate academic field, evidenced by an increasingly vibrant and burgeoning literature and scholarly canon (Cascio & Boudreau, 2016). However, the phenomenon-driven extant field has led to theoretical fragmentation (Collings, Scullion & Vaiman, 2015). Notably, the field has evolved significantly over the last decade. There have been several books centring on talent management (Al Ariss, 2014; Collings, Mellahi & Cascio, 2017; Collings, Scullion & Caligiuri, 2018) and a number of dedicated special issues in academic journals such as Journal of World Business, International Journal of Human Resource Management and Human Resource Management Review, among others. Why do we need this new Research Handbook of International Talent Management? We argue that talent management research still tends to be lacking theoretical underpinnings, especially from a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and comparative perspective and, moreover, through a broader geographical coverage around the globe. Scientists, including social scientists (Trewhella, 2009; Van Noorden, 2015), are urgently encouraged to adopt a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to tackle societal and economic grand challenges facing the global economy today. This rationale justified our belief, efforts and commitment in producing this research handbook. The aim of this handbook is to respond to this gap by assembling a rich range of leading researchers, scholars and academic thought-leaders to debate and advance the conceptualization and understanding of international talent management – a multifaceted area that covers multiple domains of management and organization studies.