To me it depends on the skills that people are being rewarded for. If we are rewarding people for doing a good technical job, then I'm in favor of that. Too often people are rewarded because of who they befriend and not what work they produce.

When a company promotes people because they are nice and go along with the flow, then expects to get improved performance they are often disappointed. People who just go along with the flow often are unable to drive improvement because improvement requires change from the way you are doing things.