Edinburgh Napier University

  Against a background of significant public service reform and growing acceptance of the need for increased collaborative activity within Scotland’s public services, our research examines senior stakeholders’ perceptions of the drivers for, barriers to, and enablers of talent management within a public service collaborative context. Using a sequential mixed methods (questionnaire and interview) strategy, our findings reveal vast conceptual ambiguity in defining the collective nature of, need for, and value add to be derived from collaborative talent management. Further, the nature of public service collaboration is complex and is a contributing factor to challenges in progressing collaborative talent management interventions.