Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, believed that men are divided into three classes: gold, silver and bronze. Vilfredo Pareto,

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问题     Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, believed that men are divided into three classes: gold, silver and bronze. Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, argued that "the vital few" account for most progress. In the private sector, best companies struggle relentlessly to find and keep the vital few. They offer them fat pay packets, extra training, powerful mentors and more challenging assignments.
    As the economy begins to recover, companies are trying harder to nurture raw talent, or to poach it from their rivals. Private-equity firms rely heavily on a few stars. High-tech firms, for all their egalitarianism (平均主义), are ruthless about recruiting the brightest. Firms in emerging markets are desperate to find young high-flyers to cope with rapid growth and fast-changing environments.
    Bill Conaty and Ram Charan’s recent book The Talent Masters provides a nice mix of portraits of well-known talent factories along with sketches of more recent converts to the cause. "Talent masters" are proud of their elitism. GE divides its employees into three groups based on their promise. Hindustan Unilever compiles a list of people who show innate (天生的) leadership qualities. "Talent masters" all seem to agree on the importance of two things: measurement and differentiation. The best companies routinely subject employees to various "reviews" and "assessments". But when it comes to high-flyers they make more effort to build up a three-dimensional picture of their personalities and to provide lots of feedback.
    A powerful motivator is to single out high-flyers for special training. GE spends $ 1 billion a year on it. Novartis sends high-flyers to regular off-site training sessions. Many companies also embrace on-job training, speaking of "stretch" assignments or "baptisms by fire". The most coveted (令人垂涎的) are foreign postings: these can help young managers understand what it is like to run an entire company with a wide range of problems.
    Successful companies make sure that senior managers are involved with "talent development". Bosses of GE and P&G spent 40% of their time on personnel. Intel obliged senior managers to spend at least a week in a year teaching high-flyers. Involving the company’s top brass (高级职员) in the process prevents lower-level managers from monopolizing high-flyers and creates dialogues between established and future leaders. Successful companies also integrate talent development with their broader strategy to ensure that companies are more than the sum of their parts. P&G likes its managers to be both innovative and worldly. Goodyear replaced 23 of its 24 senior managers in two years as it shifted its target-consumers from carmakers to motorists.
    Meanwhile, in their rush to classify people, companies can miss potential stars. Those who are singled out for special treatment can become too full of themselves. But the first problem can be fixed by flexibility: people who are average in one job can become stars in another. And people who become too smug can be discarded.
What does the author mainly talk about in the last paragraph?

选项 A、The importance of equality.
B、The necessity of flexibility.
C、The drawbacks of elitism.
D、The harm of self-conceit.

答案C

解析 主旨大意题。原文前五段都在讲顶级公司对人才的重视,讲它们如何争夺和培养人才,但是此段开头第一个词Meanwhne提示话题的转变,开始讨论精英论带来的两方面的缺点及对策。所以答案是C)。
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