The Peter PrincipleDr. Laurence Peter noted that in educational and other bureaucracies, its central theme with regard to employees was that “in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” He co-authored a satirical commentary "The Peter Principle". Members of the organization are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later 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 "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence". The "level of incompetence" in the Peter Principle is where the employee has no chance of further promotion, thus reaching his or her career's ceiling in an organization. The employee's incompetence is not necessarily because of promotions to higher position which could be more difficult. It could be a job that is different from the job in which the employee previously excelled, and thus requires different work skills, which the employee may not possess. An example of this is a factory worker who is excellence in his job, becomes manager, at which point the skills that earned him his promotion no longer apply to his new job. One way that organizations attempt to avoid this effect is to refrain from promoting a worker until he or she shows the skills and work habits needed to succeed at the next higher job. Thus, a worker is not promoted to managing others if he or she does not already display management abilities. Another way to avoid this problem is utilizing the manager selection process. Another great article to look at is: Job Competence and mobility relation. ----------- For more clever thoughts and quotes from Dr. Laurence Peter, visit this page.
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