The third stream focuses on the management of talented people. This literature argues that all roles within the organisation should be filled with “A performers”, referred to as “topgrading” (Smart, 1999) and emphasises the management of “C players”, or consistently poor performers, out of the organisation (Michaels et al., 2001). While the third approach is highly influential, we recognise limitations to this approach and argue it is neither desirable nor appropriate to fill all positions within the organisation with top performers. Equally, if the talent management system is applied to all of an organisation's employees (i.e. including poor performers as well as top performing employees), it is difficult to differentiate talent management from
conventional human resource management.