The Impact of Applying Talent Management Strategies in Achieving Competitive Advantage in Commercial Banks in Southern Jordan

The study aimed at identifying the impact of applying talent management strategies in achieving competitive advantage in commercial banks in southern Jordan. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, a questionnaire was developed for the purpose of data collection, the study sample consisted of (145) employees with the rank (director, assistant director, and head of department), they were chosen through a comprehensive survey method. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (Spss.19) was used to find arithmetic means, standard deviations, multiple regression analysis and descriptive and inferential statistics, the most important results are: the perceptions of the study sample individuals to the level of talent management strategies in the researched banks are of intermediate level, and the perceptions of the study sample members for the level of achieving the competitive advantage in the researched banks were of an intermediate level. The study recommends strengthening the capabilities of workers by creating a database and information systems that provide banks with the necessary and timely information to formulate a clearly defined strategy to achieve competitive advantage, starting to bring about an organizational culture within the research banks based on talent management strategies, and the elaboration of values that express the concepts of participation and cooperation, working as a team and diversifying skills because of their positive impact on achieving competitive advantage.


Introduction
The current era is witnessing more progress, technological development and openness towards globalization, therefore, there were more interest and competition to attract talented people, which made many of them prefer migration from their homelands towards countries that provide attractions to these minds that are full of talents, each organization tries to attract the best talents, which serve the achievement of Its goals.
Owning talent has become one of the biggest challenges facing companies in the modern era to meet the requirements of business management for this era, as the environment was characterized by change, speed and intense competition, therefore the talent has become of great importance to achieve excellence and it is in great demand, as many business organizations have started to develop strategies to manage talent, and to work on developing, attracting and retaining them, so that they are able to make positive changes that achieve productive efficiency and innovative leadership within the organization. Therefore, companies derive their strength in achieving a competitive advantage by relying on talented individuals, not by providing the best technologies, products and prices, but they derive it from being flexible and innovative, and their ability to keep pace with external changes and technological developments, and that these competitive advantages can be achieved by the company through individuals that directly take care of them.

The study problem
Many organizations currently, including commercial banks, are seeking excellence and development in providing services and accessing a competitive advantage in light of the changes and challenges witnessed in the last decade of the twentieth century, which led to changing the work environment and the emergence of intense competition between these banks and urged them to stay and continue, in light of these changes and challenges banks develop their organizational structures, internal processes, technology and human resources development in order to be distinguished in the performance of their business over other banks.
Hence the problem of the study lies by answering the following main question: What is the impact of applying talent management strategies in achieving competitive advantage in commercial banks in the south?

The importance of studying
The importance of the current study is summarized in the following points: 1. This study derives its importance from the importance of talent management strategies, as it has great implications in identifying talent owners, attracting, developing and exploiting them for the benefit of organization.
2. The importance of the banking sector, which is one of the most developed, changing and influencing sectors on the state's economy in general and the southern governorates in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in particular, given the spread of many commercial banks in the southern governorates that seek to keep pace with development, change and diversity in the use of administrative methods that achieve competitive edge.
3. You can benefit from the results of this study, which will help decision makers in making constructive decisions that contribute to achieving competitive advantage.

Study questions
The study seeks to answer the following questions: 1. What is the level of impact of applying talent management strategies (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) in Jordanian commercial banks in the southern governorates? 2. What is the level of achieving competitive advantage (cost, flexibility) in Jordanian commercial banks in the southern governorates?

Objectives of the study
The research seeks to achieve the following objectives: 1. Discuss and analyze theoretical concepts related to talent management and competitive advantage.
2. Defining and describing the impact of the talent management dimensions on competitive advantage.
3. Providing a number of recommendations, based on the results of the study, and making use of them.

Study hypotheses
The study seeks to test the validity of the following hypotheses: The main hypothesis: There is no statistically significant impact at the level of significance (α≤ 0.05) for talent management in its dimensions (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) in the competitive advantage in its dimensions (cost, flexibility) in Jordanian commercial banks in the southern governorates.
The following sub-hypotheses are branched from this hypothesis: 1. First sub-hypothesis: There is no statistically significant impact at the significance level (α≤0.05) of talent management in its dimensions (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) on cost as one dimension of the dependent variable the "competitive advantage".
2. The second sub-hypothesis: There is no statistically significant impact at the significance level (α≤0.05) of talent management with its dimensions (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) on flexibility as one dimension of the dependent variable the "competitive advantage".

Talent management
The successive developments in business and management organizations in the world, and the intensity of competition between the countries, made success and differentiation a strategic goal for business organizations, based on this fact, investing in talents became part of the organizations strategies, so that they can be competitive. In the late of the last century we find some companies trying to attract employees with high competencies and qualifications, and to retain and develop their human resources, until they became part of the modern administration systems taking place in the twenty-first century, this stage was the beginning of the emergence of the idea of managing human talents instead of human resources management (Siam, 2013).
German, Japanese, Chinese, and Malaysian experiences, and many other countries' experiences indicate that achieving excellence in business organizations is not only through establishing of human resource units in the organizational structure, but it is also intended to work strategically to increase the number of talented people by designing programs for learning, training and development (Ghayat, 2013).

The concept of talent management
The concept of talent management appeared in the beginning of the nineties of the last century, where business organizations interacted with this concept and its dimensions, which led to the interaction of companies with the management of individuals, so the concept of human resources management then the concept of human talent emerged (Hills, 2009). There are a number of definitions of talent management. The researchers differed on the definition of talent management.
Horvathova (2011) defined it as "a set of business and activities of the organization concerned with owning, improving, motivating and sustaining talented employees to achieve the current and future the goals of organizations. Waheed et al. (2012) defined talent management as "a set of administrative systems that identify the most important functions in an organization that help in achieving the goals of the organization by attracting the right individuals to perform it effectively and efficiently.
Muqri and Hayawi (2014) defined it as "a set of organized policies and procedures that are based on selecting employees based on the competencies they possess, training and developing those within the organization, and discovering the talented people within the organization, enhancing, motivating, sustaining and retaining them as a valuable source to achieve competitive advantage.
"Through previous definitions, the study defines talent management as "a set of strategies and practices designed by business organizations with the aim of attracting, developing, motivating and retaining talented individuals and enabling them to be highly productive."

The concept of competitive advantage
There is no agreed upon definition of competitive advantage, due to its difference in the nature of the sector under study, but it can be defined in general as an advantage or an element of superiority for the organization that can be achieved if it follows a specific strategy for competition (Saleh, 2009).
As the competitive advantage is the ability of the company to provide a product or service that is difficult to imitate by competitors, and then attract the largest number of customers and increase the market share of the company compared to competitors, as well as improving employee attitudes and external mental image towards the company (Abdel Hamid, 2012).
It is also the ability to produce goods and services with good quality and the right price at the right time, this means meeting the needs of consumers more efficiently than other organizations, as it arises once the organizations has discovered new methods more effective than those used by competitors (Abu Bakr, 2006).

Previous studies
Khalifa (2017) study titled: "The Impact of Talent Management on Achieving Creativity in Kuwaiti Commercial Banks" This study aimed to measure the impact of talent management on achieving creativity in Kuwaiti commercial banks, to achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher designed a questionnaire to collect initial data from the study sample consisting of 171 individuals.
The study adopted the descriptive analytical method in testing its hypotheses. The study concluded a number of results, the most prominent are: the presence of a statistically significant impact of talent management (selecting, developing, and retaining the talented) in achieving creativity in Kuwaiti commercial banks and the absence of statistically significance impact of the attracting talented people strategy in achieving creativity in Kuwaiti commercial banks.
Al Kasasbeh (2016) study titled: "The Impact of Talent Management and Organizational Learning on the Sustainability of Zain". This study aimed at measuring the impact of talent management and organizational learning on the sustainability of Zain, to achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher designed a questionnaire, in order to collect the initial data from the study sample consisting of 90 individuals, the study adopted the descriptive analytical approach in testing its hypotheses using the statistical program (SPSS) to find the values of arithmetic means and standard deviations, the descriptive analytical method was used to collect data and analyze it, the study found that the level of talent management application was high, and that the level of organizational learning application was also high, the study also showed the impact of the presence of talent management and organizational learning in the dependent dimension sustainability of Zain company.
Al-Jarrah and Abu Dawla (2015) study entitled: "Application of talent management strategies in enhancing organizational belonging among faculty members in the official Jordanian universities." This study aimed at applying talent management strategies in enhancing organizational belonging, to achieve the goals of the study the researcher designed a questionnaire to collect the primary data from the study sample consisting of 300 members, he used the descriptive analytical method in order to collect data and analyze it, the descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analyzing the study data, the study concluded that the level of application of talent management strategies and organizational belonging was intermediate in general, the study also showed an important impact and a positive proportional correlation to the level of applying talent management strategies on organizational belonging. Qeshta (2016) study entitled: "A proposed strategy for developing intellectual capital to achieve competitive advantage in Palestinian universities". The study sample consisted of 191. The researcher used the descriptive approach; he developed a questionnaire in order to achieve the goal of the study. The study showed the following results: The relative weight of the degree of the requirements for developing intellectual capital to achieve the competitive advantage reached 71.94%.
Tamiliyyah and Maqatif (2014) study entitled "The Impact of Direct Marketing Methods on Building a Competitive Advantage: A Field Study of Five Star Hotels in Amman". The study sample consisted of 13 fivestar hotels in the Greater Amman area. The researcher developed a questionnaire to collect study data by distributing it to the managers and employees of the marketing department. The study reached the following results: The existence of an impact of direct marketing methods in building the competitive advantage of these hotels, whether in the field of controlling costs resulting from a focus on the market sector or the field of product excellence. The study also concluded that e-mail as one of the direct marketing methods is the most important in influencing the building of the competitive advantage of these hotels, the study showed the importance of the hotel's website in achieving the wide spread of hotel service, and the need to use a mobile phone to communicate with customers in order to persuade them and help them in making the decision to buy the hotel service that they want.
Abdel Hamid (2013) study "A strategic vision of intellectual capital and its role in achieving competitive advantage" aimed at identifying the availability of intellectual capital and the extent of interest in it in telecommunications companies, its role in developing creative capabilities in these companies, then achieving added value and a competitive advantage, the study sample consisted of 45 researchers from Vodafone company in Egypt, the study results showed that interest in intellectual capital in its various dimensions leads to achieving a competitive advantage and that the process of stimulating intellectual capital has explained a percentage of (52.3%) of the total variance of the competitive advantage.

Study method
The study was based on the descriptive analytical approach that includes conducting a desk survey by referring to the references and sources for building the theoretical framework for the study, the field survey to collect data by means of the study tool (the questionnaire), which was developed and distributed to the members of the sample and statistical analysis.

Study community
The study population consists of the managers in the upper and middle management in the commercial banks in the southern governorates; they are 145 director, assistant director and head of department, who work in 9 commercial banks using the comprehensive survey method for all of the study community. 145 questionnaires were distributed, of which 135 were retrieved with a percentage of (93.1%) from the questionnaires distributed to the study population, and 8 questionnaires were excluded because they were not valid for statistical analysis. Therefore 127 from the questionnaires distributed to the study population i.e. (87.7%) of the distributed questionnaire which is an acceptable percentage for scientific research purposes. The following table shows the distribution of the study sample individuals according to their personal and functional variables. Table 1. Distribution of the study population according to personal and functional variables

Study tool, data and information collection methods
A questionnaire was developed based on Likert's five-choice scale, which ranges between totally agree and never agree, with a relative weight (5-1), the questionnaire was divided into two main groups: the first is concerned with the personal and employment data of the respondents, the second is at the core of the research topic, it includes a group of items that relate to three main axes of the independent variable (strategic intelligence), namely: foresight, organized thinking, and strategic vision. It will also include a number of items that cover the dependent variable (achieving entrepreneurship), which are: singularity, initiation, and taking risk.
Tool validity: The internal consistency coefficient of the study tool was extracted, based on the Cronbach's Alpha scale for each of the study variables in all of its dimensions, the validity coefficient values were high, indicating the validity and consistency between the tool's items, the following Table 2 shows the validity coefficient values. The statistical data in Table 3 indicate that the dimensions of the independent variable (a talent management strategies) was medium with an arithmetic mean equal to 3.60, talents dimension came first with an arithmetic mean equal 3.80 followed by attracting talents dimension with an arithmetic mean of 3.6 at Last came attracting talent dimension with a mean of 3.40. The results indicate that the variable of talent management strategies dimensions have been available in the companies researched from a high to a medium degree. Answer to the second question: What is the level of achieving competitive advantage (cost, flexibility) in Jordanian commercial banks in the southern governorates? The statistical data in Table 4 indicate that the respondents' perceptions to the items of the dimensions of the competitive advantage variable were medium with an arithmetic mean equal to 3.42.
Study hypotheses test: Before starting the application of regression analysis to test the study hypotheses, some tests were performed, in order to ensure the compatibility of the data with the regression analysis assumptions, as follows: It was confirmed that there was no high correlation between the independent variables (Multicollinearity) using the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) test and Tolerance test for each of the study variables.
Taking into account that the value of the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) does not exceed the value 10 and the value of the Tolerance test is greater than 0.05, it was also ensured that the data were followed for the normal distribution by calculating the skewness coefficient taking into account that the data follow the normal distribution if the value of the skewness coefficient is less than 1. Table 4 shows the results of these tests. We note that the values of the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) test for all independent variables is less than 10 and ranges between 1.640 -2.625 and that the values of Tolerance varied between 0.468 -0.630, this is an indication of the absence of high correlation among the independent variables (Multicollinearity). It was confirmed that the data follow the normal distribution by calculating the Skewness coefficient, where the values were less than 1, and the validity of the model will be checked to test the hypotheses of the study.

Main hypothesis test results
The main hypothesis: There is no statistically significant impact at the level of significance α≤ 0.05 for talent management in its dimensions (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) in the competitive advantage in its dimensions (cost, flexibility) in Jordanian commercial banks in the southern governorates. The statistical results in the table show the validity of the model to test the main study hypothesis and that there is a statistically significant impact of the dimensions of talent management (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) in the competitive advantage in its dimensions (cost, flexibility) depending on the calculated value of (f) that amounted 303.680 at the significance level 0.000, which is significant at the significance level 0.05. The statistical results in the same table also show that the dimension of talent management as an independent variable explains the amount of 60.6% of the variance in the dependent variable (competitive advantage).
From the above, it is necessary to reject the first main hypothesis in its nihilistic form and accept the alternative hypothesis which states: There is a statistically significant impact at the level of significance α≤ 0.05 for managing talent in its dimensions (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) in the competitive advantage in its dimensions (cost, flexibility). When performing the gradual multiple regression analysis to determine the importance of each independent variable separately in contributing to the mathematical model that represents the dimensions of strategic intelligence in achieving entrepreneurship, Table 6 shows the order of entry of independent variables in the regression equation. Attracting talent ranked first and explained 52% of the variance in the dependent variable (competitive advantage) followed by the talent development variable that explains with the variable attracting talents amounting up to 65%. Finally, the variable for retaining talents that explains with the previous variables amounted to 67.5% of the variance in the dependent variable (competitive advantage).

The first sub-hypothesis
There is no statistically significant impact at the significance level α≤0.05 of talent management in its dimensions (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) in cost as one dimension of the dependent variable of competitive advantage. It is clear from the statistical results mentioned in Table 7 the follow-up of the Beta coefficients and the (t) test that the following sub variables related to (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) have an impact on cost as a dimension of competitive advantage, in terms of Beta coefficients of these variables as they appear in the table and in terms of the difference of the calculated (t) values with its tabular value at the significance level α≤0.01, where calculated values of (t) were 5.617, 7.120 and 4.582, respectively. From the above, we notice the following: Rejection of the null hypothesis which states that there is no statistically significant impact at the level of significance α≤0.05 for talent management in its dimensions (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) in the cost as one dimension of the dependent variable of the competitive advantage. When performing a step-wise multiple regression analysis to determine the importance of each individual variable separately in contributing to the mathematical model, which represents the impact of talent management strategies (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) on cost as a dimension of competitive advantage, it is clear from Table 8 Which shows the order of entry of the independent variables in the regression equation, the talent development variable ranked first and explained 44.1% of the variance in the dependent variable, followed by the talent attraction variable and explained with the talent development variable, 49.2% of the variance in the dependent variable, thirdly entered the substitution talent variable which explained with former two variables 55.3 % talents of the variation in the dependent variable, finally the variable retaining talent which interpreted with the previous variables 58.1% of the variation in the structural flexibility as a dependent variable. The second sub-hypothesis: There is no statistically significant impact at the significance level (α≤0.05) of talent management in its dimensions (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) in flexibility as one dimension of the dependent competitive advantage variable. It is clear from the statistical results mentioned in Table 9 the follow-up of (Beta) coefficients and the (t) test that the following sub variables related to (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) have an impact on flexibility as one of the dimensions of competitive advantage, in terms of Beta coefficients of these variables as they appear in the table and in terms of the difference between (t) calculated values and its tabular value at the significance level α≤0.01. As the calculated values of (t) was 4.163, 10.311 and 3.701 respectively, from the above we found the following: There is no statistically significant impact at the significance level α≤0.05 of talent management in its dimensions (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) in flexibility as one of the dimensions of the dependent variable competitive advantage. And when conducting a step-wise multiple regression analysis to determine the importance of each individual variable separately in contributing to the mathematical model, which represents the impact of talent management strategies (attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent) on flexibility as one of the dimensions of competitive advantage, it is clear from Table 10 which shows the order of entry of the independent variables in the regression equation, the talent development variable ranked first and explained 39.2% of the variance in the dependent variable, followed by the talent attraction variable and explained with the talent development variable 45.3% of the variance in the dependent variable. Finally entered the retaining talent variable which interpreted with former variables 49.2% of the variation in the dependent variable. The order in which the independent variables enter the prediction equation 5. Emphasizing on conducting more scientific studies on the subject of the current study to include other organizations and samples in order to generalize their results and make recommendations thereon.