Editing Vitality curve (section)

=== Specific examples ===
According to [[Qualtrics]] CEO Ryan Smith, stack-ranking and similar systems are suitable for ranking [[salesman|sales personnel]] among whom the management wishes to foster a spirit of [[Competition#Economics|competition]], but less suitable for [[engineer]]s, among whom management may want to encourage closer [[collaboration]].<ref name="abcnews.go.com">{{Cite web|url=https://abcnews.go.com/Business/microsoft-abolishes-stack-ranking-employees/story?id=20877556|title=Microsoft: 'Stack-Ranking' Gets Heave-Ho|website=ABC News}}</ref>

According to a 2006 MIT study cited by ''[[Bloomberg Businessweek]]'', forced ranking can be particularly detrimental for a company undergoing layoffs: “As the company shrinks, the rigid distribution of the bell curve forces managers to label a high performer as a mediocre. A high performer, unmotivated by such artificial demotion, behaves like a mediocre.”<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20131114053518/http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-13/microsoft-kills-its-hated-stack-rankings-dot-does-anyone-do-employee-reviews-right] citing http://web.mit.edu/chintanv/www/Publications/Chintan%20Vaishnav%20Punishing%20by%20Rewards%20for%20Publication%20Final.pdf</ref>

MIT Research Fellow Michael Schrage has argued that the forced ranking policy has perverse effects even in organizations that are successful: "Organizations intent on rigorous self-improvement and its measurement inevitably confront an evaluation paradox: The more successful they are in developing excellent employees, the more trivial and inconsequential the reasons become for rewarding one over the other. Perversely, truly effective objective employee-evaluation criteria ultimately lead to personnel decisions that are fundamentally rooted in arbitrary and subjective criteria. [...] The coup de grace occurs when the top employees are all told that
they must collaborate better with one another even as they compete in this rigged game of managerial [[musical chairs]]."<ref>[https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/02/21/273841/index.htm archive.fortune.com] also quoted by Stewart, Gruys and Storm (2010)</ref>