The Peter Principle, the eponymous law Laurence Peter coined, explains that 'in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.' Everyone from the office intern to the CEO, from the low-level civil servant to a nation's president will inevitably rise to his or her level of incompetence, if it hasn't happened already. Sutton has written a foreword introducing the book to a new generation of readers. This book caused a storm when first published in 1969, battering up the bestseller list to #1, charming readers from Topeka to Timbuktu, and finally, brilliantly, blessedly giving the world an answer to a question that nags us Why is incompetence so maddeningly rampant and so vexingly triumphant? The book and the phrase it defined are now considered comedic-yet-classic cornerstones of organizational thought, and in honor of the book's fortieth anniversary, Robert I.
