Would companies run better if promotions were random?
The Peter principle revisited: A computational study
Computer simulations suggested companies might work better if they promoted people completely at random.
Ig Nobel 2010
The Peter principle is the old joke that people get promoted until they reach a job they’re not good at. Three physicists built a computer model of a company to test what happens under different promotion rules.
If being good at one job doesn’t mean being good at the next, promoting people at random can actually make the whole organisation more efficient. Somewhere, a manager is reaching for a hat to draw names from.
The fairest promotion system might be a raffle.