Ben Compton wrote a fascinating post in LO17611 stating as it seemed to me
that competent people are ethical and all incompetent people who are not
trying to learn how to improve are unethical. I sympathize in that
freeriders are certainly a problem in any non-voluntary collective context
(and voluntary collective contexts like my soccer team!).
What I can say with some certainty is that you CANNOT infer from his
discussion of competent/ incompetent people that employee ranking is
essential. The two things are completely separate and not at all linkable.
The reason is that the managers are just as susceptible to incompetence as
the employees or any other people. All humans are imnperfect. That is a
fundamental defining indisputable characteristic of us all- without
exception. As such, incompetent managers do not necessarily reward other
incompetents, and competent managers suffer from bounded rationality and
limited understanding and so therefore do not necessarily recognize or
reward competence.
And if all humans are imperfect, then the least hazardous way of
proceeding to the benefit of all mankind is with natually arising
invisible automatically correcting mechanisms associated with markets,
rather than formal official mechanisms such as office ranking systems.
Good luck! regards simon buckingham
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