3 Examples of Parkinsons Law

John Spacey, March 17, 2023

Parkinson's Law is a series of three business truisms that were all introduced by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in the 1957 best seller Parkinson's Law. Parkinson was the author of some 60 books that are mostly about naval history. Despite being a highly productive writer and well known scholar, Parkinson is best known for his business witticisms that have become truisms or principles. The following are his best known observations that have all at times been referred to as Parkinson's Law.

Law of Expanding Bureaucracy

The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
~ Cyril Northcote Parkinson

The law of expanding bureaucracy predicts that the number of employees in a bureaucracy tends to rise 5–7% per year irrespective of any variation in the amount of work to be done. Parkinson explains that officials have a desire to multiply subordinates in order to increase their perceived status. He also proposes that officials in a bureaucracy are able to generate work for each other such that the amount of work to do rises as you hire more officials -- irrespective of actual value creation. Parkinson gives plenty of historical examples where this occurred. For example, he examines the British Admiralty between 1914 and 1928 where the number of active ships dropped by almost 68% but the number of Admiralty officials increased by over 78%.

Law of Time Expansion

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
~ Cyril Northcote Parkinson

The law of time expansion predicts that organizations are able to make work needlessly complex in order to fill time. This is quite different from an approach such as last responsible moment whereby you simply delay work until it really needs to be done. Organizations are able to create work by making the same problem more and more complex -- by overthinking it and overplanning it.

Law of Triviality

The Law of Triviality... briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
~ Cyril Northcote Parkinson

The law of triviality predicts that organizations will spend more time discussing trivial matters than complex problems that have far greater importance to the organization. This is an example of the path of least resistance whereby people simply prefer filling work time with easy to understand things. Parkinson uses a fictional dialog to demonstrate this type of behavior whereby committee members have no comments regarding a $10,000,000 investment in a nuclear power plant but intense debate erupts when they begin to discuss the construction of a $2350 bike shed. This story is often recounted as a much shorter analogy and is so well known that the law of triviality is also known as bike shedding.

Parkinson's Laws
Law of Expanding Bureaucracy	Organizations tend to grow irrespective of the amount of work to be done.
Law of Time Expansion	Organizations are able to make work needlessly complex in order to fill the time available.
Law of Triviality	The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the complexity or cost involved.