A Review of Agile Talent Management and Its Implementation Approach in VUCA Environment

Abstract

Today's organizations operate in a business environment widely described as VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) driven by post-pandemic recovery, geopolitical instability, and rapid technological change. Within this context, agile talent management (ATM) has emerged as a promising but still underdeveloped approach to managing an organization’s most valuable asset which is its people. This review critically examines the current state of ATM literature, drawing primarily on Dimitrov's (2025) comprehensive synthesis and supplementing it with related studies published between 2015 and 2025. The review first clarifies core concepts talent management, agile organizations, and agile talent before tracing the evolution of people management practices from traditional human resource through agile-lite human resource to full ATM. It then examines the key components of ATM (organizational structure, talent acquisition, performance management, employee engagement, and leadership development) and presents practical implementation frameworks, including the HR→T model and a six-stage implementation pathway. A bibliometric analysis reveals that while scholarly interest in ATM has accelerated sharply since 2022, the field remains dominated by qualitative, case-based research concentrated in developed Western economies, with Malaysia and Southeast Asia notably absent from the literature. The review concludes that ATM offers a coherent, practically grounded framework for transforming talent functions from transactional support services into strategic agility engines. For Malaysian organizations pursuing knowledge-based economic transformation, ATM represents both a timely management necessity and a significant opportunity for original, contextually grounded research contributions