Creating talent pools through coopetition: a case study on vocational training programs in Romania

Abstract The Romanian economy has prospered in the last years, and as a result, economic players claim today the scarcity of skilled workforce in the country. Many reasons have been mentioned for this: a dysfunctional labour market, saturated economic regions, demographic decline, migration, not adequately skilled workers. Therefore, it is crucial activating participation at an early stage to grow future skilled workforce as insufficiency of skilled human resources can limit economic growth. Talent management and talent pool growth have been concentrated on star talent acquisition and the development of new in -house talent processes. Rather slow has been the advance in generating new talent pools from an inter-firm cooperative approach. This work will make an initial approach to close this gap in research by studying the creation of talent pools through coopetition in the private sector as mean to an end to growing workforce supply. The concept is studied based on a case study that focuses on two private Vocational Education Training programs of two industries in Romania namely retail and manufacturing. The study shows that new talent pools can be grown through a coopetitive environment given harsh environments and limited resource capabilities of the firms.