The most recent Ignoble Award given out for research in management (awarded in 2010) caught my eye. The study is available here and the official reference is: Pluchino, A. Rapisarda, A.; Garofalo, C. (2010). "The Peter principle revisited: A computational study". Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 389 (3): 467–472.
In essence, they proved the
Peter Principle. For those of you
unfamiliar with the Peter Principle it is the
practice of promoting people when they are really good, with the consequence
that you are taking them out of the job they are good at and putting them in a different one. Simple probability
predicts that they will be less good at their new job then they were at the previous one where they excelled. This research found that organizations would
do better if they promoted people at random.
This way they would be equally taking people out of jobs they are good
at and out of jobs they are bad at. Again, it is simply the law of averages at work.
But doesn’t this imply that the BEST way to award promotions
is always to promote the worst performers? It would be kind of scary to find
out that this is actually the best strategy.
Do you think it would?
Let me know in the comments.
