5 ms·
Curious - what's the origin of stack ranking? Was there any science (psychology/sociology) behind it?
by mbesto 13y ago
Curious - what's the origin of stack ranking? Was there any science (psychology/sociology) behind it?
- nness 13y agoI'm not sure how it was developed, but its popularity is credited to Jack Welch, who introduced it to General Electric in 1980. In doing so, GE experienced a "5-fold increase in revenue": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve
- marshray 13y agoIn 1980 President Reagan was elected. In addition to many technologies (e.g., LSI ICs) coming online, the amount of taxpayer debt that the US government funneled into our industrial sector over the next few years was simply staggering. One should look at where this revenue was coming from and compare GE to other companies in the sector (i.e., other makers of nuclear reactors and jet engines) during this time before drawing conclusions about personnel management theories (of all things).
- michaelt 13y agoI've heard it attributed to former GE CEO Jack Welch [1] who is apparently Fortune magazine's Manager of the Century. In terms of hard science, unfortunately blind randomized controlled trials are impossible, so it's not possible to definitively isolate causal relationships and confounding factors. "It seemed to work for GE in the 1980s" is the best that's on offer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve