Book chapter 2017

Diamonds are not for forever: Talent development at de beers

Effective Talent Management Strategies for Organizational Success
Journal · pp. 134-159
Abstract

This article seeks to understand how a family enterprise was structured and positioned and grew into a successful global mining house. The focus is on how talent was managed drawing ontology from the mining industry founded in 1873 in South Africa by British and Dutch colonists. The founding families are those of Deidrick and Johannes De Beer, Alfred Beit, Cecil Rhodes, Nathaniel Rothschild and Ernest Oppenheimer. The De Beer brothers sold out to Cecil Rhodes and his partners and the business was, amalgamated later with Anglo American Corporation. The business arrangement continued for four generations under the direction of the Oppenheimer family who were apprenticed by excellent craftsmen in the diamond trade, and educated in finance economics and law from Europe's best business schools, and a conducive segregated political environment which ended in a US Supreme Court judgment in 2012. However, the Oppenheimers nurtured the mining house to a successful international mining business that employs more than 20 000 people around the world today. © 2017 by IGI Global. All rights reserved.

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Author Affiliations
Seidman College of Business, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, United States
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No funding information
References 10 References
1 Things Fall Apart, (1958)
2 Bush Family Relation in Diamond Ring Dispute, (2008)
3 Vocational Education and Apprenticeships in Europe, (2005)
4 Mining Law of the British Empire, (1906)
5 Altrichter, Herbert, Action Research: A closed chapter in the history of German social science?, Educational Action Research, 1, 3, pp. 329-360, (1993)
6 Social Learning Theory, (1977)
7 Social Foundations of Thought and Action A Social Cognitive Theory, (1986)
8 Talent Management Handbook, (2004)
9 New York Times, (2000)
10 International Journal of Strategic Change Management, (2015)
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