Parkinson’s
Law
By C. Northcote Parkinson
Illustration by R.C. Osborne from Chapter 3, High Finance
Parkinson’s most famous law is that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion”.
This law explains, in part, how bureaucracies grow. It must be added that bureaucracies are a curse on economic growth: Within industry they stifle innovation; in government the taxes to support the bureaucracies stifle investment while the bureaucracies create a morass of debilitating rules and regulations.
He
enlarges on the argument as to why bureaucracies expand by
examining people within a bureaucracy and the historic record of
two English bureaucracies. With tongue in cheek he establishes
that these
Interestingly, employment at the EPA has grown at just under 4% since its inception in 1970.
Parkinson
explores how boards of directors focus their attention on the
simplest of issues while quickly approving vast sums for
projects about which they have little knowledge. His resulting
law; “time
spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to
the sum involved”.
He skewers committees.
While the law “the solvency of the firm is inversely proportional to the opulence of the façade” may not be attributable to Parkinson, he deals with the issue in an interesting way.
About the Author:
C. Northcote Parkinson was the Raffles Professor of History, University of Malaysia when this book was written. He was a British historian and author of some sixty books.
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