Linking talent management practices to autonomous work motivation and proactive customer service behavior: Insights from hospital nurses of Bangladesh

The study aimed to evaluate the impact of talent management (TM) practices (i.e., identifying critical positions, talent acquisition, talent development, talent retention) on proactive customer service behavior (PCSB) of private hospital nurses directly and through promoting autonomous work motivation (AWM). Employing the convenience sampling method and a structured questionnaire, our study gathered 275 self-reported responses from nurses working in private hospitals in Bangladesh with a response rate of 55 %. The study opted for structural equation modelling to analyze the relationships between the variables, while SPSS was employed to evaluate descriptive statistics and correlations. The findings from the PLS-SEM analysis suggest that all four TM practices (identifying critical positions, talent acquisition, talent development, talent retention) have a significant positive effect on PCSB. Moreover, AWM is found to serve as the intervening mechanism between the TM practices and PCSB, except for the indirect linkage arising from identifying critical positions. The results suggest that implementing favorable talent management practices can instill a sense of autonomous motivation among nurses, thereby motivating them to engage more in proactive service behavior towards their patients. This study advances the research by identifying AWM as an intervening variable between TM practices and PCSB.