Parkinson's Law

Parkinson's Law formulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson states : "Work Expands so as to fill the Time Available for its Completion". Granted that work (especially paper work) is elastic in its demands on time, it is manifest that there is little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned. A lack of real activity does not result in leisure. A lack of occupation is not necessarily revealed by a manifest idleness. The thing to be done swells in importance and complexity in a direct ratio of the time to be spent. This fact is widely recognized, but less attention has been paid to its wider implications, especially in the field of public administration. Politicians and taxpayers have assumed that a rising total of the number of civil servants must reflect a growing volume of work to be done.Cynics have said that the multiplication of officials must have left some of them idle or all of them to work for shorter hours. The fact is that the number of officials and the quantity of work are not related to each other at all. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson's Law, and would be much the same, whether the volume of work were to increase, diminish, or even disappear.

We must picture a civil servant, A who finds himself overworked. Whether this overwork is real or imaginary is immaterial. But we should observe that A's view might easily result from his own decreasing energy: a normal symtom of middle age. There are three possible remedies. A may resign, he may share his work equally with B, or he may ask for two subordinates C and D. There is no instance ever of A choosing the first two options. A always chooses the third option, two subordinates to work for him. By having B appointed in the same level of hierarchy, he will face a rival, when A's superior retires. So, he would have C and D, junior men, below him. They will add to his consequence, and by dividing the work into two categories between C and D, A will have the power of controlling C and D. If A has only one assistant C, he will find himself sharing the work with C and the same problem of sharing the work with B will arise.

Subordinates must be two or more, each kept in fear of others being promoted ahead of himself.
When C complains of being overworked, he may, with the help of A, get two more assistants, E and F to work under C. But A can avoid internal friction between C and D, only by appointing two assistants, G and H to work for D.

Seven offials are now doing the work, originally done by one. This essentially is Parkinson's law.
Perhaps this is where The Peter Principle comes into operation.

The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle is that "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence" While formulated by Dr. Lawrence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise, which also introduced "the salutary science of 'Hierarchiology', inadvertently founded by Dr. Peter, the principle has real validity. It holds that in a hierarchy members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are not competent, "the level of their incompetence", and there they remain. Dr. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee, who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".

The employee's incompetence is not necessarily exposed as a result of the higher-ranking position being more difficult, - simply that the job is different from the previous job in which the employee had previously excelled, and thus requires different skills, which the employee usually does not possess.

Where exceptions to this exist, the scenario switches to the "Septic Tank Principle", which is broadly similar but is usually described as "excrement rising to the top"

Along with the Peter Principle, Dr. Peter also coined the word, "Hierarchiology"as the social science concerned with the basic principles of hierarchially organized systems in human society