The Peter Principle Analysis

In the essay, “The Peter Principle”, Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull argue that no matter what the job or position is, there comes a time where every job gets filled by someone who isn’t competent enough to fulfill their role completely. This article is extracted from the book called The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong. With having every right to speak about the issue, Peter and Hull specified certain examples to convey their point clearly. Laurence Peter was a Canadian educator and hierarchiologist and Raymond Hull was a Canadian playwright, television screenwriter and lecturer. Laurence Peter also published The Peter Plan and Peter’s Almanac. One of Raymond Hull’s most prominent works is Effective Public Speaking. Although

Peer, the author got encouraged by the words of others to pursue a teaching certificate. It further discusses how different people getting hold on the same job position think differently and set other for themselves specific priorities. According to The Peter Principle, every job position regardless of the field, has some sort of incompetence. The article further provides examples to support its argument. These examples include the military commanders and politicians. It is also mentioned how the reason of this incompetence could be the governing figures at the top of employment hierarchy in every field. Thus the author started to mention some of the examples collected from historical data. The first example mentioned is about a foreman who works in the public works department of Excelsior City and how this employee was a competent foreman but an incompetent superintendent. Secondly, an anecdote explains how an apprentice at an Auto repair shop and how that apprentice became incompetent as a foreman while he was a competent mechanic. The author then concludes that everyone will sooner or later reach their level of incompetence but some take longer than others. Before concluding the article, the author declares the discovery of the new science of hierarchiology. He also further describes how every member of the society is indirectly affected by ‘The Peter Principle.’ Lastly, he asserted that

Because incompetence cannot be avoided, employees will certainly one day prove themselves incompetent at work because as they succeed in displaying a certain skill, they will automatically get promoted to the next level. That is why we can conclude that practically, people get promoted into incompetence. The ‘Peter Principle’ seems to be a sequential standard excerpted from personal experience. Even though the topic is very serious and deserves to be completely comprehended before judged, the author chose to commence his topic with a personal anecdote. However, the author used one anecdote to build up his theory and then continued searching deeper till he was able to find two more examples to anchor his point of view. With the lack of ethos as a rhetorical appeal or credible statistics, the author chooses to present the topic from a very personal perspective. In addition, an argument is normally discussed from different point of views. The author should have considered including counter-arguments and refuting them to make his article more