Efficient promotion strategies to face the Peter principle

The Peter principle was recently investigated by means of agent-based simulations and its validity was numerically corroborated. These studies confirmed that within certain conditions, it can really influence in a negative way the efficiency of a pyramidal organization adopting meritocratic promotions. It was also found that, in order to bypass these effects, alternative promotion strategies should be adopted, as for example, a random selection choice. In this paper we review efficient promotion strategies in more realistic and modular organizations, showing the robustness of previous results and extending their validity to a more general context.