If you have something else, they will not be trying so hard.
Generally, to make people try hard you need either punishments for not working or some benefits. Skinner proposed a little more complex classifications: positive/negative punishment/reinforcement[1]. Positive when you react by bringing punishment or reinforcement, negative if you remove them. So four different kinds of operant conditioning. His findings are not directly applicable to human subjects, but they are not completely irrelevant either.
So if you are trying to fix Stalin's system towards more humanism,... I have two ideas:
1. Negative punishment: make lives of highly ranked bureaucrats miserable, with the "promotion" as the only way to stop their misery.
2. Positive reinforcement: make a promotion for them to be a dream of their lives.
I'd try (1), with (2) conditionally on their performance. This way you could get an endless stream of applicants to pick from, and they really-really would do their best to move to the last part of their life, even if they turned out to be incompetents.
The only problem is how to distinguish short term and long term successes.
PS. Please don't get it too seriously, I was carried away by the idea of good Stalin.
Generally, to make people try hard you need either punishments for not working or some benefits. Skinner proposed a little more complex classifications: positive/negative punishment/reinforcement[1]. Positive when you react by bringing punishment or reinforcement, negative if you remove them. So four different kinds of operant conditioning. His findings are not directly applicable to human subjects, but they are not completely irrelevant either.
So if you are trying to fix Stalin's system towards more humanism,... I have two ideas:
1. Negative punishment: make lives of highly ranked bureaucrats miserable, with the "promotion" as the only way to stop their misery.
2. Positive reinforcement: make a promotion for them to be a dream of their lives.
I'd try (1), with (2) conditionally on their performance. This way you could get an endless stream of applicants to pick from, and they really-really would do their best to move to the last part of their life, even if they turned out to be incompetents.
The only problem is how to distinguish short term and long term successes.
PS. Please don't get it too seriously, I was carried away by the idea of good Stalin.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment_(psychology)