Do employees find inclusive talent management fairer? It depends. Contrasting self-interest and principle

In this paper, we critically examine the assumption that most employees, and especially those not identified as talents, find exclusive talent management less fair than inclusive talent management. Across two factorial survey studies—one of which manipulates talent status experimentally (N = 300), the other using field data on meta-perceived talent ratings (N = 209)—we examine the extent to which the perceived fairness of talent management is predicted by self-interest (i.e., the extent to which you yourself are seen as talented) versus principle (i.e., a dispositional preference for equality-vs. merit-based allocations). We found a clear effect of talent status, indicating that perceived fairness is at least partly determined by self-interest (i.e., whether one personally stands to gain or lose from exclusive talent management). We also found an effect for preferred allocation norm—implying that fairness perceptions are influenced by matters of principle, independently from self-interest—but only on the boundary condition that organizations provide a transparent justification for their chosen (inclusive or exclusive) talent philosophy. Two major gaps are addressed: the lack of data on how employees perceive and experience talent management practices, and the inability of common study designs to make causal claims.