The Peter Principle

Lawrence J. Peter (an American psychologist, teacher and consultant with experience of working in prisons and dealing with children) presented several ideas of management in his book "The Peter Principle" (1969). The work is typically brisk, non-academic, amusing and stimulating for the non-academic manager.

Lawrence Peter and Raymond Hull (1969) generalised that people are often promoted to a level at which they are incompetent. Sccessful in one job they will be as potential candidates for the next by their firm. Only when they fail to succeed in the next job will they be discounted for further promotion.

As Pettinger presents - the Peter principle can be illustrated by an extract from C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (1953). 'The head's friends saw that the head was no use as a head, so they made her an inspector, to Interfere with other heads. And when they found she wasn't much good even at that, they got her into Parliament, where she lived happily ever after.'

The Peter principle as a parody encourages

• questions about premises and expectations made about promotions and career development.
• Promotion based on competence in the current job rather than the competence required for the new one may act on a false premise.
• One set of characteristics are being appraised. It may be that 'sound performance' in one job may simply be based on the individual not actually doing any harm.
• Anecdotal evidence for the 'Peter Principle' in action is commonwhere internal promotion to supervisory and management posts is based upon an operative's performance in his/her current job rather than on any aptitude for supervision, management or direction. But the evidence is anecdotal. yet from this we conclude a generalisation ie. organisations in promoting inappropriately gain incompetent or inadequate supervisors and lose highly competent technicians.
• What wider evidence is there for this? Is there evidencethat some organisations have sought to overcome such problems by restructuring their grading and rewards systems?

Of course we can pontificate that "excellent chefs do not necessarily make the best Food and Bev managers or the best nurses do not, per se, make the best nurse managers".

What do we learn from the Peter Principle:

• ability to identify genuine levels and requirements of job performance and attributes required to carry them out, and to set criteria against which post holders can be measured accurately. People may then be placed in jobs that they can do and for which they are best suited.
• All this assumes the accuracy of a psychometric objective set of assumptions relating to job-person measurement. This offers problems. What are they?
• Can aptitude for promotion, or any other preferred job for that matter, be systematically assessed on the basis of matching personal qualities with desired performance and organisational appointments made accordingly?
• What significant if any does the "principle" have for growing and nurturing our own experts and managers and for succession and continuity planning. Are such generalisations of any value at all?

Peter L. Hull R, (1969), The Peter Principle, Pan.