The Peter principle is a management concept developed by Laurence J. Peter, who observes that people in the hierarchy tend to rise to "their level of incompetence". In other words, an employee is promoted based on their success in previous work until they reach a level where they are no longer competent, since skills in one job need not be translated into another job. This concept is described in Peter and Raymond Hull's 1969 The Peter Principle .
The Peter Principle was published by William Morrow and Company in 1969. Peter and Hull wanted the book to be an allusion, but it became popular because it seemed to make serious points about the shortcomings of how people were promoted in hierarchical organizations. Hull wrote the text, based on Peter's research.
The Peter Principle has been the subject of many comments and later research.
Video Peter principle
Summary
Peter's principle states that someone who is competent in his job will get promoted to a more senior position requiring different skills. If the promoted person does not have the skills required for their new role, then they will be incompetent on their new level, so they will not be promoted again. But if they are competent in their new role, then they will be promoted again, and they will continue to be promoted until they finally reach a level where they are incompetent. Being incompetent, they are not eligible for promotion anymore, and so remain stuck in the final level for the rest of their career (called "Final Placement" or "Peter Plateau"). This result can not be avoided, given enough time and assuming that there is enough position in the hierarchy to promote competent employees. The "Peter Principle" is therefore expressed as: "In the hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of disability." This leads to Peter's Consequences: "In time, every post tends to be occupied by an incompetent employee to carry out his duties." Hull calls the study of how hierarchies work "hierarchiology." Maps Peter principle
The Peter Principle
Laurence J. Peter has conducted a study that led to the formulation of Peter's principles long before publishing his findings. He worked with Raymond Hull on a book explaining his observations of hierarchy. This principle is named for Peter because although Hull actually wrote the book, this is a summary of Peter's research. The Peter Principle was published by William Morrow and Company in 1969.
Summary
In chapters 1 and 2, Peter and Hull provide examples of Peter's principles in action. A competent mechanic can make incompetent foremen; a competent schoolteacher can be a competent principal assistant, but then an incompetent headmaster, and will therefore not be considered for promotion as an assistant principal; a military officer can be promoted all the way up to the general ranks and still competent on that rank, but then make incompetent field marshal. In each case, higher positions require unnecessary skills at the right level below. The mechanic should only know how to fix the car, but as a foreman he should be able to manage other mechanics and deal with customers. The teacher is competent in educating children, and as an assistant headmaster he is good at dealing with parents and other teachers, but as a principal he is poor in maintaining good relations with school boards and supervisors. The general was able to deal with ordinary soldiers, but as a field marshal he did not know how to deal with politicians and his country's allied marshals. They concluded that "this can happen to every employee in every hierarchy."
In Chapter 3, Peter and Hull discussed a clear exception to this principle and then rejected it. One of the exceptions to this illusion is when an incompetent person remains promoted. This is known as "percussive sublimation" (ie "kicked up"). But it's just a false promotion: a shift from one unproductive position to another; while the correct promotion is to move from a position of competence (either to a position of competence or to an incompetent position). This improves the morale of staff, because other employees believe that they can also be promoted again. Another pseudo promotion is "lateral arabesque" , when someone is removed from the street and given a longer position.
Competencies are measured by the employer, not by the customer or anyone outside the hierarchy. "Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder." So people who appear to outsiders become incompetent because they follow organizational rules to the extent that they actually inhibit their effectiveness are still deemed competent by their immediate supervisor, because internal consistency is valued higher than efficient service ". It's called "Reversal of Peter," because means has become more important than over . Those who appreciate the means over the tip are called "Peter's Inverts."
While disability is just a barrier to further promotion, super-incompetence is the reason for dismissal. So is the super competence. Employee competence at some level can be represented by a bell curve: the majority are competent or incompetent and thus can keep working, but a small number of outliers are very super-competent or super-competent, and in both cases "they tend to disrupt the hierarchy." they are expelled to preserve the hierarchy; a process called "hierarchical exfoliation" . One example of a highly competent employee is a children's teacher with special needs that is very effective in educating them that after one year they exceed all hope in reading and counting, but the teacher is still fired because he has neglected to devote enough time. for beads-stringing and painting with fingers.
Chapters 4 and 5 discuss promotional achievement methods: "Push" and "Drag." Encouragement means the efforts of the employees themselves, such as working hard and taking self improvement courses. This is usually not very effective, because the Seniority Factor: the next level of riding is often full, blocking the path to promotion. (Killing someone's immediate superior can be an effective way to overcome these obstacles, but since this is a very rare phenomenon it does not really affect Peter's and Hull's judgment of Push.) Pull is much more effective, and refers to the acceleration of the campaigns generated by efforts of mentors or employee customers. It is better to have as many protectors as possible, because each additional shield produces a multiplier effect on their combined effectiveness, as customers reinforce their positive opinions about employees by discussing each other ("Hull Theorem").
Chapter 6 explains why "good followers are not good leaders." In Chapter 7, Peter and Hull explain the effects of Peter's Principles in politics and government. Chapter 8, entitled "Hints and Shadows", discusses the work of previous writers on the problem of incompetence, such as Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Alexander Pope.
Chapter 9 explains that once employees have reached their level of incompetence, they are always unaware of their situation. Most do not realize that they are incompetent, but those who recognize their own inadequacy still never realize that it is because they have been promoted, and therefore they are in vain seeking another explanation instead. In this chapter, Peter and Hull continue to explain why intelligence tests do not work and are completely counter-productive. Finally, they describe "Peak Competence": when a person reaches the highest level in his organization and is still competent at that level. This is simply because there are not enough ratings in the hierarchy, or because they do not have time to reach the level of incompetence. Such people often look for levels of disability in other hierarchies. For example, Socrates was an extraordinary teacher but a terrible defense lawyer. This is known as "Compulsive Incompetence."
Chapter 10 explains why trying to help incompetent employees by promoting other employees to act as their assistants does not work. "Incompetent and incompetent with incompetence."
Chapters 11 and 12 describe the various medical and psychological manifestations of stress that can occur when a person reaches his level of disability, as well as other symptoms such as speech or behavior.
Chapter 13 considers whether it is possible for an employee who has reached his level of inability to be happy and healthy once he gets there. The answer is no, if he realizes the real situation, and yes if he does not. Those who realize that they are incompetent usually think (wrongly) that this is just because they are not working hard enough, so they work harder until they burn or damage their health. So facing dirty truth is not recommended. Those who have not yet realized that they are at their level of inability remain happy and healthy because they are replacing tasks that are irrelevant to the exact task of their position, and excel on them instead. Peter and Hull describe six different Substitution techniques.
In chapter 14 different ways to avoid promotion to the final level are explained. Attempting to reject promotions on offer is not recommended, and can only be done if the employee is not married and has no other person to answer. In general it is better to avoid being considered for promotion in the first place, by pretending to be incompetent while the one is actually still working at the level of competence. This is "Creative Incompetence," and several examples of successful techniques are given. This works best if the selected incompetence field does not really interfere with one's work.
The concluding chapter applies the Peter Principle to all human species at the evolutionary level, and asks whether humans can survive in the long run, or will become extinct after reaching their level of incompetence during technological advances.
More research
Other commentators made similar observations to Peter's head long before Peter's research. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's 1763 play Minna von Barnhelm features an army sergeant who avoids the opportunity to ride in the ranks, saying "I am a good sergeant, I might easily become a bad captain, and of course even the general Someone knows from experience. "Similarly, Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) wrote that" nothing is more common than hearing people lose their energy to be raised to a higher position, which they do not feel themselves the same. " Closely Peter, the Spanish philosopher JosÃÆ'Â © Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) wrote, "All public employees must be lowered to a lesser degree, because they have been promoted to incompetence."
A number of scholars have engaged in research that interprets Peter's principles and their effects. In 2000, Edward Lazear explored two possible explanations for the phenomenon. The first is the idea that employees work harder to get promoted, and then resign once it has been achieved. The other is that it is a statistical process: the promoted worker has passed a benchmark of certain productivity based on factors that can not always be replicated in their new role, leading to Peter's principle situation. Lazear concludes that the preceding explanation only occurs under certain compensation structures, while the latter always persists.
Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo use an agent-based modeling approach to simulate the promotion of employees in a system in which Peter's principles are considered true. They found that the best way to improve efficiency in a company is to promote people at random, or to choose the best and worst players in a particular group, from which the person to be promoted is then chosen at random. For this work, they won the 2010 edition of Parody Ig Nobel Prize in management science.
In 2018, professors Alan Benson, Danielle Li, and Kelly Shue analyzed the performance and sales promotion practices of salespeople in 214 American businesses to test the truth of Peter's principles. They found that these companies tend to promote employees to management positions based on their performance in their previous positions, rather than on managerial potential. Consistent with Peter's principles, the researchers found that high-performance sales employees were more likely to be promoted, and that they were more likely to perform poorly as managers, which led to considerable costs for businesses.
Response by organization
Companies and organizations form their policies to keep up with Peter's principles. Lazear points out that several factors of the company are in the understanding that productivity will "back down to mean" following promotion into their hiring and promotion practices. Other companies have adopted the Cravath System, where non-progressing employees are periodically fired. The Cravath system was developed at Cravath law firm, Swaine & amp; Moore, who makes the practice of hiring recent law graduates, promotes internally, and fires unemployed employees at the requested level. Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths have suggested improving multiplicative multiplication additives/algorithms as a solution to Peter's less severe principles than firing unsuccessful employees. They propose a dynamic hierarchy in which employees are regularly promoted or diverted to a lesser extent, so that every worker promoted to the point of failure is immediately transferred to the area where they are productive.
See also
- Dilbert principle
- Dunning-Kruger Effects
- Founder syndrome
- Up or exit
- Negative (political) options
- Parkinson's Law
- Successful Putt and Technocrat Law
- Sisteman
References
Bibliography
- Alan Benson, Danielle Li, Kelly Shue (February 12, 2018): Peter's Promotion and Principle , Available on SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3047193
-
Christian, Brian; Griffiths, Tom (2016). Algorithm for Living With . Henry Holt and Company. pp.Ã, 219-220. ISBN: 1627790373. Ã, - Lazear, Edward P (October 12, 2000). "Peter's Principle: Promotion and Decreased Productivity" (PDF) . Hoover Institution and Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
- Peter, Laurence J. and Hull, Raymond. The Peter Principle , William Morrow & amp; Co Inc, 1969 (Pan Books 1970 edition).
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments