ATLANTA – Many American companies that had adopted a much-vaunted employee evaluation system have lately been turning away from it.

Known as “stacked ranking” or “forced ranking,” the process made famous by GE is really just a version of what teachers call grading on the curve: a few people at the top, a few at the bottom and the rest clumped in the middle.

The practice leaped into the spotlight – at least for people who study how companies perform – when Vanity Fair’s August issue published a profile of technology icon Microsoft. The company’s malaise, the author argued, was partly pegged to its evaluation system.