Managers move a known disruptive or underperforming employee into a rival's team, labeled development or rotation and sometimes backed by an inflated review, and the rival's performance and morale absorb the damage.
An example
Two division heads at an engineering services firm were competing for the same capital allocation. One of them had carried a senior structural engineer whose calculations were sound and whose behavior in design reviews drove juniors off his team. In the spring he proposed a cross-pollination rotation that would place the engineer on the rival division's bridge program. His year-end review of her, written the week before, called her an exceptional mentor. The rival's program was short two engineers and had a submittal due in eight weeks, and its head accepted without calling anyone. Within three months, two of his juniors had asked to transfer out, the submittal slipped, and his division's capital request went in a quarter late. A former colleague of the engineer later told him the review matched nothing she had seen.
Why it works
Accepting is easy: the transfer comes wrapped in development language, sometimes with a clean or glowing review, and a referral shortcuts the usual checks. Refusing looks worse, petty and uncollegial, a doubt about a colleague's growth. Refusing is also costly: the receiving manager would have to call the employee a problem without documentation and risk an open conflict with the sender. Influence over internal routing, a thin adverse record, a culture that prizes collegial acceptance of transfers, and a receiver under hiring pressure all help it along. It fails when the receiver has independent information about the person.
The thinking behind it
George A. Akerlof In The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism (1970), Akerlof shows what happens when the seller knows the quality and the buyer cannot tell. The sending manager knows the employee; the receiving manager has only the file. Independent checks with people who worked alongside the person close the gap that makes the transfer possible.
A. Michael Spence Spence's Job Market Signaling (1973) explains that a signal is credible when it is costly, and more costly for those without the quality being signaled. A glowing review costs the sender nothing whatever the employee's quality, so it carries little information. Feeding post-hire performance back to the referrer gives the review a cost, which is what makes it believable again.
Mark Granovetter Granovetter's The Strength of Weak Ties (1973) argues that acquaintances who span groups carry information that close contacts do not. The receiving manager's best defense is such a tie: someone elsewhere in the company who worked with the employee and will say what the paper record leaves out.
Warning signs
A transfer out of a peer's team lands on yours, labeled growth or rotation, and the file holds no adverse record, or a glowing review written just before the move. A warm, unsolicited referral arrives from someone whose interests run against yours, with no performance detail volunteered. Your team is under pressure to fill the seat fast. The sender gains nothing on their own side of the org chart.
How to defend yourself
Check before you accept.
- Gather your own information: talk to people who worked alongside the employee, outside the paper record.
- Ask the sender for specific performance detail in writing, and ask why the person is moving now.
- Screen internal referrals as rigorously as outside candidates, especially when the referrer has a stake in your results.
- Document who referred the person and what they said. A traceable chain of recommendation turns the cost back on the recommender.
If the hire goes wrong, take the record back to the sender and to human resources. A sender caught once loses credibility for every later recommendation.
How a leader shuts it down
Declining a transfer should be cheap, documented, and procedurally normal. Run calibration sessions so reviews cannot be inflated ahead of a move, track referral sources, and feed post-hire performance back to the referrer. Take note of any manager whose departing people keep failing on rival teams, since the second time is a pattern.