The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle states that every employee in a corporate hierarchy tends to rise to a plateau of incompetency. In this book, Dr. Laurence Peter takes the reader through the inadequacy of organizations as a result of promoting the competent employee to a higher position. It reveals employees' unhappiness due to feeling incompetent in their promoted position, and the harsh fact that organizations are kept functional by the many competent employees who have not crossed the threshold to be promoted, yet.

The basic assumption behind this principle is that employees are promoted based on their competency in their current position, and not based on the capability to take on higher responsibilities that comes along with a promotion. The Peter Principle is weaken the moment this assumption is removed. Hence, although this book provides a different insight into the evolution of hierarchies, we should not be particularly concern over this if we are able to work around it.