Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Strategic CSR

Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Strategic CSR - Good intentions + bad outcomes

Appreciating the prevalence of the unintended consequences of good intentions is central to the counterintuitive nature of strategic CSR. Along these lines, the article in the url below made me laugh and rings true, in the very human sense that we often can't get out of our own way. Specifically, the article deals with promotions in companies:

"Many congratulations on your promotion. It's probably downhill from here. This deflating prognosis is not true of every job, person or organisation. But too often, a promotion is a precursor to problems."

Specifically, the article cited academic research that was designed to test the Peter principle:

"… developed by Laurence J. Peter, a 'hierarchologist'—that people are promoted to the level at which they are no longer competent."

In other words, people are promoted based on past performance (not future potential), and stop being promoted once they reach a level in a job they can no longer do very well. Taken to the extreme, this means that most people who are 'stuck' in a position at work are probably there because they are no longer performing at a high level, which might explain why so many organizations are dysfunctional:

"The [research] examined data on sales transactions and job moves across a panel of more than 50,000 workers at 214 America firms between 2005 and 2011. It showed that being a good salesperson increased the probability of being promoted into a management position, but was a negative predictor of managerial quality. In other words, the performance of a sales hotshot's new subordinates tended to go backwards."

These results reminded me a little of academia, and mirror prior research using a simulation to theorize the same principle:

"An organization where promotion depends on competence in a previous role and where the new job requires different skills will indeed end up elevating people to a position they do badly. Random promotions would be a better system, the researchers concluded."

The article concludes that, where a promotion requires skills different to the dominant skills in a person's current role, then performance should not be used to assess whether the promotion is awarded.

Take care

David

David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation (6e)

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler6e

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

The problem with promotions

By Bartleby

January 10, 2026

The Economist

Late Edition – Final