23 Chapter II Literature Review II.1 Problem Exploration Blue White Group has undergone significant expansion, diversifying its product offerings to include electronics, lifestyle products, and digital services. This growth strategy includes opening new outlets, enhancing its e-commerce platform, and developing an omnichannel approach—all of which need a robust talent development framework to manage diverse operations and drive continuous innovation. The rapid growth of Blue White Group Group underscores the critical need for effective leadership that will support such growth and achieve sustainable success. The current leadership development framework needs to be enhanced to bring about leaders in a diversified retail business capable of negotiating through complexities. Blue White Group faces a substantial talent gap due to an insufficient number of prepared leaders for filling the new roles required by its diversified operations. This gap poses a threat to the company's adaptability and the successful implementation of its business diversification strategy. Figure II.1 shows the comprehensive succession planning process of Blue White Group: the main stakeholders, their needs, and the processes through which a robust leadership pipeline is developed. The focus areas include talent management, organizational readiness assessments, and various learning activities—social, formal, and experiential—to prepare generalist and specialist leaders. The visual representation underlines the integration of strategic business 24 initiatives with talent development efforts to support the company's growth and diversification strategy. Figure 2. 1 Rich Picture of Succession Planning in a Diversified Retail Company This is further supported by the evaluation of current talent development practices for their alignment with the business diversification strategy of Blue White Group. The development framework should address the leadership capabilities required for diversification, expansion, and regionalization by meeting the diverse operational needs of the company. Identification of the competencies that are to be developed within a leader in a specific business vertical is essential: strategic thinking, innovation management, and leading cross-functional teams. 25 Determine the level of the talent gap concerning leadership readiness and its causes. From this analysis, conclusions about the urgency and scale of required leadership development to achieve the strategic objectives can be drawn. Formulate recommendations for the revision of the existing talent development framework, ensuring it can be more sensitive to the dynamic retail environment. This should embed best practices in diversified retail groups and further strengthen Blue White Group's approach. From the rich picture analysis to the background of the thesis, there is great complexity and urgency in creating a broad framework of talent development for the Blue White Group. It has to be created to develop leader mobility, bridge the gap in available talent, and link up with business strategic objectives. This will ensure a strong pipeline of leaders who can drive the diversified business operations of Blue White Group by focusing on selected leadership competencies and using a mix of social, formal, and experiential learning. II.2 Theoretical Foundation In order to build a comprehensive talent development framework for cultivating leader mobility within Blue White Group as a diversified retail company, it is crucial to establish a solid theoretical foundation. This theoretical foundation delves into the essential theories and models that underpin the various components of proposing the framework. 26 Talent Development Framework Talent development refers to systematic approaches adopted by organizations to develop and enhance the competencies, capabilities, and potential of their workforce. According to Pruis (2011), talent development entails systematic programs and initiatives that foster growth and development of employees to enable them to realize their full potential within the organization. In this regard, the process entails identification of high-potential employees followed by their continuous learning and grooming for future leadership roles (Pruis, 2011). Talent development naturally follows from talent management, since both activities are aimed at improving the human capital of an organization. The scope of activities in talent management is wider—it includes attraction, retention, and strategic deployment of talent—while talent development focuses on the building and developing of competencies and skills of the existing workforce. Schreuder and Noorman (2019) argue that effective talent management requires integrating strategic talent development in line with organizational objectives in order to enhance the overall performance (Schreuder & Noorman, 2019). The scope of talent development encompasses several activities and programmes designed to develop employees' skills—ranging from formal training and learning programmes to informal learning experiences such as mentoring, coaching, and on-the-job training. According to Pruis (2011), effective talent development needs a clear policy that defines what is considered 27 talent in the organisation and a coordinated process that combines all relevant human resource functions. Pruis (2011) outlines five key principles for talent development: a. Clear Talent Policy: Establish a clear definition of talent and criteria for identifying talented individuals. b. Integrated Process: Ensure that talent development is part of a coherent organizational effort, involving recruitment, assessment, career planning, and performance management. c. Alignment with Corporate Challenges: Build talent development programs around the organization’s strategic challenges. d. Mentoring and Role Models: Use mentoring to enhance organizational know-how and business insight. e. Harnessing Cognitive Surplus: Engage talents in meaningful tasks and leverage their potential for organizational development. Pruis (2011) develops both a comprehensive framework for talent policy formulation and an integrated process which can be applicable in the case of Blue White Group. The author's strong emphasis on the long-term benefit of inclusive talent development strategies really rings with the idea of developing leadership mobility and ascertaining continuing business growth. The emphasis 28 on mentoring and leveraging cognitive surplus can raise the effectiveness of Blue White Group's talent development initiatives by ensuring that high- potential employees are fully engaged and developed continuously. There are talent development approaches: a. Inclusive Talent Development—ITD—is focused on the provision of developmental opportunities for all employees regardless of their performance indicators, ensuring the development of a fair and capable workforce. ITD contributes to organizational sustainability through the creation of an integrated talent pipeline at a lower cost compared to exclusive approaches (Kaliannan et al., 2023). b. ETD: The focus here is on high-potential or high-performing employees, usually associated with leadership and critical roles. This is a cost-intensive approach, but the objective is to have the most significant possible effect on strategic objectives (Kaliannan et al., 2023; Panda & Sahoo, 2015). Effective frameworks employ various interventions: a.