Politically skilled but otherwise incompetent people might sometimes climb up the ladders of an organization better than people high on substance know-how but low on politics. This, of course, likely results in non-optimal management performance. It would be interesting to know if there's a systematic bias involved here.
Anyone know of this type of research?
These days, people do not so readily accept as manager someone whose credentials they do not admire. If persons are promoted because they are politicians, others will deride management for forcing them to become politicians, too. They will stop performing or they will quit. This should matter very much. When rewards and perquisites go to mere cleverness, obsequiousness, or nonperformance, an organization declines in tune with these attributes. Human resource management needs to change. Too often, what passes for management of human resources has little to do with human resources and even less with management. Detractors say that most human resource divisions would be hard-pressed to prove that they are making a real difference. As a minimum, it should be recognized that the majority of people want to work productively and that managing them is the responsibility of their manager, not that of a human resource specialist. But there are vital roles that are best carried out by human resource divisions. One of them is growing managers, not bosses. There are implications for training, selection, coaching and mentoring, giving people who merit it the chance to manage, education for management and leadership, and strategies for manager development. This said, the rise of networked organizations is putting increasing pressure on hierarchies: the day may come when the very notion of career development is moot. Two articles that explore these ideas are Growing Managers, Not Bosses and On Networked Organizations, available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254582901_Growing_Managers_Not_Bosses and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266477071_On_Networked_Organizations, respectively.
Article Growing Managers, Not Bosses
Article On Networked Organizations
The attached article discusses when and how sociopaths rise rapidly in the managerial ranks and examines their destructive impact through incompetence and self-serving behaviours. I think this might what you're alluding to in your question ...
Article Organisational sociopaths: Rarely challenged, often promoted. Why?
In 2005, Jean Lipman-Blumen wrote about The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why Followers Rarely Escape Their Clutches. The article, available at http://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/the-allure-of-toxic-leaders-why-followers-rarely-escape-their-clutches/, investigates why people not only tolerate but often prefer and sometimes even create toxic leaders in virtually all arenas of human endeavor. Lipman-Blumen finds three reasons: the internal needs and human condition of the followers; the interactions between followers and their own environments; and the relationships of followers with toxic leaders.
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