Peter Principle - members promoted beyond their level of ability

Peter Principle - Wikipedia

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For the BBC sitcom, see The Peter Principle (TV series).

 

The Peter Principle is a proposition that states that the members of an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, "Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence." In more formal parlance, the effect could be stated as: employees tend to be given increasing authority until they cannot continue to work competently. It was formulated by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous^[1] treatise, which also introduced the "salutary science of hierarchiology".

The principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. Peter's Corollary states that "[i]n time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties"^[2] and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence."

"Managing upward" is the concept of a subordinate finding ways to subtly manipulate his or her superiors in order to prevent them from interfering with the subordinate's productive activity or to generally limit the damage done by the superiors' incompetence.
This principle can be modeled and has theoretical validity for simulations.^[3]

Contents

• 1 Overview
• 2 Solutions
• 3 Hierarchiology
• 4 Summary of Corollaries
• 5 Impact on popular culture
• 6 Earlier version
• 7 See also
• 8 References
• 9 Bibliography