I saw the downfall of stack ranking immediately after a company I worked at was acquired by Microsoft. The workplace changed within a month from one focused on teamwork and support to Lord of the Flies. When the only way you can succeed is by being "better" then someone else you are forced to step upon others.
I believe that this is also the effect of working for a public company with a stock that hasn't moved in price in 10 years.
Seen the same - work turned into a Survivor gameshow. Instead of concentrating on the product, everyone formed alliances and ganged up on the less-liked people. Everybody was so focused on politics nobody cared about the product anymore. Then the product died. I still don't think our MBA execs learned a damn thing from the whole fiasco, I'm sure they're somewhere else getting paid big bucks to run some other poor teams into the ground.
I've seen this a few times at MSFT. Except that the product didn't really die because nobody wanted to take responsibility for the actual killing. And every now and then there would be a re-org, the former exec would "move on" to his next atrocity and a "recycled" exec would go in front of the team and declare his passion for the product and that this time it will be different.
I believe that this is also the effect of working for a public company with a stock that hasn't moved in price in 10 years.