It's common to believe that natural selection leads to an efficient effective result. This is a false and inapplicable. In the first place natural selection just means that the least defective, insofar as survival is concerned, changes that randomly occur pass on to the next generation. There is no guarantee of forward progress along any axis.

Secondly a human power structure a created thing needn't follow any such law. Success in society often depends more on perception than any objective measure of success. While bad decision making can put one out of business eventually there is no guarantee that the ones that follow will be more rational.

In large companies the connection between personal performance and company results is incredibly weak.

At the lower rungs this is because of how little influence there is on the big picture. On the higher rungs this is because everything has been completely de-risked through outsourcing of responsibility, depersonalizing potential blame in case of failure while at the same time allowing full credit basking when things didn't fail.

This is how a Kodak can develop digital cameras yet go bankrupt when their revenue model breaks.

The McDonnell/Boeing merger is a good example of why the natural selection logic is not a good model to think about human interactions.

Natural selection will apply, just not at a timescale we are generally willing to accept.

I would define "incompetent managers" in exactly that way. They lack the knowledge and skills which their role requires and which are needed to make the decisions which are best for the company. Or course that can lead to companies going bankrupt and otherwise performing worse than they would have.

> The reason I ask is that it would seem that natural selection would take over, and if a management style that employees feel good about actually helps the company thrive, then those companies that promote "bad" managers would go out of business and be replaced by ones that promote "good" management style.

I would argue that "bad" managers would generally have higher turnover than "good" managers. And I would further argue that companies have repeatedly demonstrated that high turnover isn't bad when the company is obscenely profitable despite that high turnover.

And I’d say that’s because most managers can’t see the opportunity cost of high turnover or low morale.

I agree

> Or more generally, are traits that are undesirable to subordinates, yet desirable to higher management, actually good for the company, and are traits that the subordinates value actually detrimental to the company?

This issue is not about traits, but outcome. If you delegate a task, you want that task to get done as you expect it to get done. The manager is your single point of contact wrt how that task is being executed, and thus the person who is held accountable for the outcome of that task. You hired someone to handle that task because you want it done but you can't spare your time doing it yourself. The manager keeps you in the loop and briefed about the major sticking points, and works with you to adjust your expectations. Obviously it's important that engineers approve their manager but the primary goal is obviously delivering projects that meet requirements and expectations, not pampering subordinates.

Often not. This is a really under looked at part of business. Sales is an excellent example. Most sales cultures are super super competitive. The natural inclination is to promote the best salespeople to be sales managers. But sales talent is a poor proxy for management talent, so you usually don’t get the best results (and your best sales people stop selling!). Resolving this is not easy, because it conflicts with people’s sense of fairness and how we think of career growth. You also need to do a lot of work if you want to figure out what a good management skill proxy is instead.