By Douglas MacMillan

A look at nine industries

In a recent survey of some 1,900 professionals from more than 1,000 public and private-sector companies, researchers from the IBM Institute for Business Value and the Human Capital Institute asked employees at a variety of levels in a plethora of industries to identify their organizations’ specific strengths and weaknesses when it comes to managing talent. Clear differences emerged: Knowledge-intensive businesses tended to focus on development and collaboration, while service-intensive ones emphasized employee attraction and retention. Meanwhile, all nonprofit industries studied—government, education, and health care—lagged behind the private sector in virtually all areas of talent management.

Click through this BusinessWeek slideshow to see how the nine industries covered in the report stack up.