Building and Activating Innovative Human Capital for Organizational Performance: A Qualitative Study of Strategic Talent Management in Automotive Firms

Abstract

This study explains the organizational mechanisms through which strategic talent management (STM) forms, activates, and renews innovative human capital (IHC) in Chinese automotive firms. A qualitative process design was used, drawing exclusively on 25 semi-structured interviews with information-rich informants from 16 firms. Thematic analysis supported by NVivo produced 56 first-order codes, 12 second-order themes, and four aggregate dimensions. The findings indicate that participants described STM as a strategic architecture that anticipates capability needs, configures talent portfolios, coordinates expertise across functions, and uses feedback to sustain alignment. IHC formation was associated with the identification of innovation potential, experiential development, external knowledge integration, autonomy, and a supportive learning climate. Participants further linked the organizational use of IHC to activation mechanisms involving commercialization routines, cross-functional execution, incentives, accountability, and multidimensional performance assessment. Participants identified policy uncertainty, technological change, talent scarcity, organizational inertia, digital resistance, and cultural conflict as conditions that could constrain or reshape the STM–IHC process and prompt adaptive responses. Cross-case tensions show that digital systems, incentives, and formal assessment tools can both enable and constrain capability development. The study contributes a mechanism-based explanation of STM, theorizes IHC as an emergent and activatable capability, and identifies structural frictions as process-shaping conditions.