Parkinson's law
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Parkinson's Law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." A more succinct phrasing also commonly used is "work expands to fill the time available." It was first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, appearing as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955, later reprinted together with other essays in the book Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress (London, John Murray, 1958). He derived the dictum from his extensive experience in the British Civil Service.
The current form of the law is not that which Parkinson refers to by that name in the article. Rather, he assigns to the term a mathematical equation describing the rate at which bureaucracies expand over time. Much of the essay is dedicated to a summary of purportedly scientific observations supporting his law, such as the increase in the number of employees at the Colonial Office while Britain's overseas empire declined (indeed, he shows that the Colonial Office had its greatest number of staff at the point when it was folded into the Foreign Office because of a lack of colonies to administer). He explains this growth by two forces: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals" and (2) "Officials make work for each other." He notes in particular that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done."
In time, however, the first-referenced meaning of the phrase has dominated, and sprouted several corollaries: for example, the derivative relating to computers: "Data expands to fill the space available for storage". "Parkinson's Law" could be generalized further still as: "The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource." An extension is often added to this, stating that "the reverse is not true." This generalization has become very similar to the economic law of demand; that the lower the price of a service or commodity, the greater the quantity demanded.
Parkinson also proposed a rule about the efficiency of administrative councils. He defined a coefficient of inefficiency with the number of members as the main determining variable.
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[edit] Application of Parkinson's Law
Parkinson's Law is applied in many arenas of human endeavour.
- In Project Management, individual tasks with end-dates rarely finish early because the people doing the work expand the work to finish approximately at the end-date. Coupled with the Student syndrome, individual tasks are nearly guaranteed to be late. Note that this law has been contested as false and counter-productive to project management. (See Peopleware.)
- Individuals see this arise in their daily activities as well. No matter how many things one has on one's plate, they all tend to get done. This leads to the canard, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person" because it appears they are better at "time management." While this may be true, it is just that they are doing more and the work is not expanding indefinitely to fill non-busy time.
- As an individual's income rises, their costs of living and lifestyle increases to meet their income level.
- Part of Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s observations are that once a core organisation exists, it will perpetuate and expand itself regardless of the reason it came into being.
[edit] See also
- Laws of science
- Peter Principle
- Hofstadter's law
- List of eponymous laws
- Color of the bikeshed
- Coefficient of Inefficiency
- Student syndrome
[edit] References
- Parkinson's Law, or The Pursuit of Progress, C. Northcote Parkinson, 1957. Parkinson's Law quoted in full
- Parkinson's Law, in The Economist (November 1955) - text with formula
[edit] External links
- Parkinson's Law by Prof. Cyril Northcote Parkinson - The Heretical Press
- "How Do You Cure Injelitance?"
