Michael Perelman wrote:
> In short, the real deadwood is at the top.
This is the dirty little secret carefully hidden in all the arguments for "merit" systems, etc. Even assuming (a huge assumption probably not justified) that those fired or penalized under such systems are/would be "deadwood," their replacements would be hired by the same old deadwood at the top. My own feeling is that any merit system (including those in the supposedly super-efficient corporate world) merely reproduces a bell curve and never raises the level of the curve as a whole. And when you factor in administrative incompetence and malevolence, merit systems probably tend to lower the level of the curve from what it would be based on using a lottery for hiring. The average stays the same or moves downward.
Carrol