The Dilbert principle refers to a 1990s
satiricalSatire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
observation by
DilbertDilbert is an American comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams. First published on April 16, 1989, Dilbert is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office featuring the engineer Dilbert as the title character...
cartoonist
Scott AdamsScott Raymond Adams is the American creator of the Dilbert comic strip and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, business, and general speculation....
stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-
competentCompetence is the ability of an individual to perform a job properly. A competency is a set of defined behaviors that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviors in individual employees. As defined, the term "competence" first appeared in...
employees to
managementManagement in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
(generally
middle managementMiddle management is a layer of management in an organization whose primary job responsibility is to monitor activities of subordinates while reporting to upper management....
), in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing. In the
Dilbert strip of February 5, 1995 DogbertDogbert is Dilbert's anthropomorphic pet talking dog from the Dilbert comic strip. According to creator Scott Adams, the character is being based on, if not a member of, the beagle breed.-Characterization:...
says that "leadership is nature's way of removing morons from the productive flow". Adams himself explained,
The Dilbert principle refers to a 1990s
satiricalSatire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
observation by
DilbertDilbert is an American comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams. First published on April 16, 1989, Dilbert is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office featuring the engineer Dilbert as the title character...
cartoonist
Scott AdamsScott Raymond Adams is the American creator of the Dilbert comic strip and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, business, and general speculation....
stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-
competentCompetence is the ability of an individual to perform a job properly. A competency is a set of defined behaviors that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviors in individual employees. As defined, the term "competence" first appeared in...
employees to
managementManagement in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
(generally
middle managementMiddle management is a layer of management in an organization whose primary job responsibility is to monitor activities of subordinates while reporting to upper management....
), in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing. In the
Dilbert strip of February 5, 1995 DogbertDogbert is Dilbert's anthropomorphic pet talking dog from the Dilbert comic strip. According to creator Scott Adams, the character is being based on, if not a member of, the beagle breed.-Characterization:...
says that "leadership is nature's way of removing morons from the productive flow". Adams himself explained,
I wrote The Dilbert Principle around the concept that in many cases the least competent, least smart people are promoted, simply because they’re the ones you don’t want doing actual work. You want them ordering the doughnuts and yelling at people for not doing their assignments—you know, the easy work. Your heart surgeons and your computer programmers—your smart people—aren’t in management. That principle was literally happening everywhere.
Adams explained the principle in a 1995
Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
article. Adams then expanded his study of the Dilbert principle in a
satiricalSatire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
1996 book of the same name, which is required or recommended reading at some management and
business programsThe Master of Business Administration is a :master's degree in business administration, which attracts people from a wide range of academic disciplines. The MBA designation originated in the United States, emerging from the late 19th century as the country industrialized and companies sought out...
. In the book, Adams writes that, in terms of effectiveness, use of the Dilbert principle is akin to a band of gorillas choosing an alpha-squirrel to lead them. The book has sold more than a million copies and was on the
New York Times bestseller list for 43 weeks.
Although academics may reject the principle's veracity, noting that it is at odds with traditional human resources management techniques, it originated as a form of satire that addressed a much-discussed issue in the business world.
The Dilbert principle is comparable to the
Peter PrincipleThe Peter Principle states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position at which they cannot work competently. It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J...
. As opposed to the Dilbert principle, the Peter principle assumes that people are promoted because they are competent, and that the tasks higher up in the hierarchy require skills or talents they do not possess. It concludes that due to this, a competent employee will eventually be promoted to, and remain at, a position at which he or she is incompetent.
The Dilbert principle, by contrast, assumes that hierarchy just serves as a means for removing the incompetent to "higher" positions where they will be unable to cause damage to the workflow, assuming that the upper echelons of an organization have little relevance to its actual production, and that the majority of real, productive work in a company is done by people lower in the power ladder. An earlier formulation of this effect is known as Putt's Law.
In his book,
The Peter Principle, Laurence J. PeterDr. Laurence Johnston Peter was an educator and "hierarchiologist", best known to the general public for the formulation of the Peter Principle....
explains "percussive sublimation", the act of kicking a person upstairs (i.e. promoting him to management) to get him out of the way of productive employees.