I think there is a different power play at work, if politics are important in a workplace then it benefits you to promote the less competent as they are both less threading at a peer level and they owe their position to you so can be expected to be loyal. A competent person might think they got there on their own and may not be relied on as strongly to take your side in office politics. Of course repeating this process many times rapidly erodes management competence.
This simple process is from an emergent behavior of rational actors acting in accordance to the incentives of the structure. Unlike other theories it does not necessitate irrational actors, morons, or sociopaths. Where you have people you have politics so it almost always occurs just at different speeds, hence the pervasiveness and the inevitability of the cycle of collapse and rebirth. It appears to me that only a highly competent king (someone whose position cannot be threatened by a peer) can stop this process and maybe reverse it.
This simple process is from an emergent behavior of rational actors acting in accordance to the incentives of the structure. Unlike other theories it does not necessitate irrational actors, morons, or sociopaths. Where you have people you have politics so it almost always occurs just at different speeds, hence the pervasiveness and the inevitability of the cycle of collapse and rebirth. It appears to me that only a highly competent king (someone whose position cannot be threatened by a peer) can stop this process and maybe reverse it.