Forty years ago, Canadian psychologist Laurence Peter (shown above) promulgated The Peter Principle. In a nutshell his maxim was this: Organizations will promote competent people to their level of maximum incompetence. In other words, if you're good at juggling, you'll get promoted to fire-eating, something you may have no aptitude for.
Well now some researchers at the University of Catania in Italy have gone Peter one better. They suggest you can promote people randomly and it will neither improve or worsen the organization's level of competence.
Read the whole thing here:
http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/foiling-the-peter-principle/?hp
