Laurence Peter Dies; Theorized on Incompetents

Author Laurence J. Peter, whose “Peter Principle” held that things tend to go wrong in bureaucracies because employees rise to the level of their incompetence, has died at age 70, his wife said Sunday.

Peter, who had suffered from heart trouble and a stroke and was in poor health, died in his sleep Friday in his Los Angeles home, Irene Peter said.

Peter, a psychologist and professor of education, was best known for the 1969 book he co-authored with Raymond Hull, “The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong,” a satirical chronicle of incompetence based on his experience with educational and other bureaucracies.

According to Peter, in hierarchies every employee tends to rise to the level of his or her incompetence.

This means, he wrote, that if you can do your job to your superior’s satisfaction, you will be promoted. If you function appropriately in your new position, you are eligible for promotion again.

Eventually, however, you will be promoted to a job you cannot do--and there you will remain, as a meddlesome and obstructive incompetent.

In time, Peter noted, every post tends to be occupied by someone too incompetent to carry out its duties.

And, he said, the only people who accomplish any useful work are those who have not yet been promoted to their level of incompetence.

The book sold 8 million copies and is still available in paperback in North America more than two decades after it was first published.

Hull wrote in the book’s introduction:

“Dare you read it? Dare you face, in one blinding revelation, the reason why schools do not bestow wisdom, why governments cannot maintain order, why courts do not dispense justice, why prosperity fails to produce happiness, why your utopian plans never generate utopias?

“If you read, you can never regain your present state of blissful ignorance; you will never again unthinkingly venerate your superiors or dominate your subordinates. Never! The Peter Principle once heard, cannot be forgotten.”

“The Peter Principle” was followed in 1972 with “The Peter Prescription: How to Make Things Go Right,” and in 1975 with “The Peter Plan: A Proposal for Survival.”

Born in Vancouver, Canada, on Sept. 16, 1919, Peter worked in the Canadian school system and became a professor at the University of British Columbia. He left in 1966 to work at USC.

In addition to his wife, Peter is survived by sons John and Edward; daughters Alice and Margaret, and three grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.