Italian physicist Andrea Rapisarda presents his Ig Nobel Prize-winning research about The Peter Principle, at the Ig Nobel show at the University of Oslo. The show was the first stop of the 2016 Ig Nobel EuroTour. Behold the video: The 2010 Ig Nobel Prize for management was awarded to Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the […]
Tag: promotion
Announcing the Ig Nobel free-tickets-to-the-2015-ceremony winner
Earlier this year we announced that people who purchased a subscription to the Annals of Improbable Research between Sept 18 and Sept 30 would be entered in a drawing for 2 free tickets to next year’s (2015) Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. To ensure a fair drawing, we separated the duties of numbering the eligible entries and […]
Long-term results: Should You Trade Stocks Randomly?
The Ig Nobel Prize-winning Italian researchers who demonstrated the benefits, for organizations, of promoting people at random have turned their analytical weapons on a new target. Their new study examines what happens over the long term if one randomly, rather than systematically, chooses stocks: “Are random trading strategies more successful than technical ones?” A.E. Biondo, […]
TV interview with the promote-at-random researchers
RAI-3’s Telecamere program interviewed the three random-promotion researchers. Here is the full, glorious interview, in Italian: The trio — Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy — were awarded the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize in management for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. Their published study (which they […]
Random-promotion researchers look back
On the (approximate) anniversary of their receiving the Ig Nobel Prize in management, the co-winners send this photo taken during Ig week 2010 when most of that year’s winners gathered at Toscanini’s Ice Cream for a celebration. Andrea Rapisarda writes: Almost one year ago: Ig Nobel prize 2010 for Management A shot taken after we […]
Robust goodness from random promotions
There’s new, corroborating research that organizations become more efficient when they promote people randomly. The University of Catania team that won the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize in management for the original, mathematical work, has published a new study: “Efficient Promotion Strategies in Hierarchical Organizations,” Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, Cesare Garofalo, arXiv:1102.2837v2. “the efficiency of an […]
Random-promotion discoveries, now and then
Last month, three Italian researchers were awarded an Ig Nobel prize for demonstrating mathematically that organisations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. But their research was neither the beginning nor the end of the story of how bureaucracies try – and fail – to find a good promotion method. Alessandro Pluchino, […]
The Nicolaides twist on random promotion
Phedon Nicolaides, professor at the European Institute of Public Administration, Maastricht, The Netherlands, proposes [in an essay in the Cyprus Mail] a twist on the Ig-Nobel-Prize-winning method of promoting people randomly in an organization: In September 2010 three Italian scientists won the infamous Ig Nobel prize in the category of management…. [Their solution, based on […]