Meritocractic mistakes

Paul Kedrosky has a fascinating post on Infectious Greed about the Peter Principle.

The principle says, of course, that people climb in an organization until they reach their level of maximum incompetence...

Kedrosky discusses a simulation of organisational behaviour with meritocratic promotions and where competence in a new job has low correlation with competence at a prior level.

The authors simulated the preceding in a pyramidal organizational form using a mathematical agent model. Here is the outcome...

not only the "Peter principle" is unavoidable, but it yields in turn a significant reduction of the global efficiency of the organization.

And, of course, random promotions are better for the organisation than meritocratic ones. The source material is here. Now just try telling that to the HR bots...