Objective: Iran's talent-related policies have been formulated and implemented to solve the public problems of the country by taking advantage of the talents. In fact, these policies are associated with the theoretical domain of talent research studies that examines the nature of the talent and how to use those talents. Therefore, this paper sets out to identify the prevailing talent research approaches in I. R. Iran's talent policies and to identify the nature of the relationship between these

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... two issues. Methods: This paper is conducted based on the archival research approach using comparative method for identifying talent research approaches as a coding framework for the qualitative content analysis strategy using meta-synthesis approach. Results: We have identified seven approaches in talent research studies: "philosophical", "single factorial", "multi factorial", "subjective", "objective", "generalistic" and "domainbased". Then, we analyzed the content of talent policies and related policy research studies accordingly. This paper reveals that the dominant approaches are the "generalistic" and the "subjective" approaches. Conclusion : Surprisingly, we found out that the lack of a comprehensive talent management theory in designing talent policies has led to a combination of opposing approaches.