Reframing Talent Management with AI: The Organizing Vision of Skills Intelligence

Skills intelligence is rapidly redefining talent management approaches, fueling the shift from credential-based to skills-based strategies. Drawing on organizing vision theory, this paper conceptualizes skills intelligence as an emergent socio-technical phenomenon enabled by AI. Through qualitative data analysis of the practitioner discourse, we identify the key components, functions, and affordances of skills intelligence, and argue that it has profound implications for employees, organizations, and labor markets. Our findings reveal that although industry narratives highlight the positive outcomes of efficiency and agility associated with AI-enabled skills systems, they frequently neglect critical perspectives on their unintended consequences. The paper concludes with a call to action to mobilize information systems (IS) and talent management scholars toward a critical and future-oriented approach to shaping the trajectory of this evolving technology.