Random promotions
Spent a little time learning about the Peter Principle today and found an agent-based model of company promotion strategies.
The optimal strategy? Promoting by random.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0907.0455v3.pdf
(Side note: I have reservations about agent-based models because, without proper constraints and training, they can be parameterized to basically find any result. Having said that, I did not scrutinize the methods of this paper.)