Parkinson law and organizational bureaucracy
KS Dhillon
Introduction
Most of us have heard of Parkinson’s Law which states that: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This law was first enunciated by C. Northcote Parkinson and published in 1955 in an article in The Economist (1). Parkinson a graduate of University of cambridge, did his Phd from King's College London. He was naval historian and was professor at University of Malaya in Singapore. He also served as a Major in the Queen's Royal Regiment.
The idea for this law was born out his experience in the armed forces. He noticed that in 1944, during world War II there was huge stream of paperwork at the headquarters in England. One day disaster struck when the chief of the base went on leave, the deputy fell ill and deputy’s deputy was called off on an important mission. Major Parkinson was left alone and the oddest of odd things happened, the paperwork stopped completely but the war nevertheless continued uninterrupted. Parkinson realised that there was nothing to do in the office and that they had been creating work for themselves. He also noticed that as british overseas empire shrunk the number of employees at colonial offices increased. It meant that the volume of work does not necessarily correlate with with the number of employees. Simply put it means that ‘work will expand to fill the time available for its completion’. What it means is that if you are given a task to complete in one week, the complexity of the task will increase so that it will take one week to complete, even if to start off it was a very simple task.
Beside time management the law seems to affect all aspects of our life. If we look at our computer we will find that irrespective of the size of storage space we find that it is never enough since the amount of data being stored keeps increasing. If we look at the size of our wardrobe or the size of our apartment, we will find that at the beginning there was a lot of free space available but with time there is no more space available. It is the same with the paycheck and the food we eat, it is never enough.
Bureaucratic Inefficiency
Parkinson’s law when applied to organizations can be expressed as:a.‘work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion’
b.‘number of subordinates increases at a fixed rate regardless of the amount of work produced’ (2).
Parkinson studied and published socio-dynamical systems which focused on bureaucratic and administrative bodies (3).Parkinson drew an inference based on historical evidence that there is a characteristic group size beyond which efficient decision-making ability is diminished and finding consensus is markedly diminished. He based his findings on the size of the british government in the 1950’s but studies show that the conclusions are still valid today (4). Parkinson studied the British cabinet over a 700 years period from 1257 to 1955 and found that the cabinet is initially small but gradually increases in size till it increases in size beyond 20. After an increase beyond 20, the cabinet gets superseded by a new smaller cabinet and the cycle repeats itself. He also found that during his time cabinets beyond 21 were only found in communist countries. Cabinet sized below 21 is ideal for decision making and as the size of the cabinet increases beyond 21 the efficiency reduces. As the numbers increase the influence of individual members decreases because they subdivide into smaller groups which make it easier for new members to be admitted. According to Parkinson the growth of bureaucratic or administrative bodies goes hand in hand with a drastic decrease in overall efficiency.
Parkinson also noted that an individual’s efficiency declines if he remains in the same subordinate position for too long. Hence there is a need for the subordinates to be promoted which can be achieved by decreasing the retirement age or increasing the levels of internal hierarchy. Invariably the retirement age cannot be reduced hence an increase in number of subordinates occurs in an organization.
Research shows that when there are more people than needed in an organization than employees can be kept busy inefficiently or the employees can keep themselves busy inefficiently. What the administrators do is to create additional procedures for the employees to carry out to complete their job. This may include additional paperwork, more forms to fill and more formal documents to file. This extra paperwork helps to fill up the administrator’s time as well, when the documents have to inspected, processed, photocopied, signed and filed. This does not improve the quality of the service and in fact can lead to deterioration of the service. This however fits well with Parkinson’s observations that the work to be done increases in a direct ratio with the time and personnel available (5).
Parkinson in his essay, ‘Parkinson’s law, or The rising pyramid’, reiterates that in the field of public administration there are two motivating factors for growth in the number of staff and this can be represented ‘by two almost axiomatic statements, thus: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals" and (2) "Officials make work for each other."’
Why and how does a civil servant multiply subordinates ? The starting point is usually when a civil servant, called A, finds himself overworked, irrespective of whether this ‘overwork’ is real or imaginary. It may very well be due to aging. He now theoretically has three options. One is to resign, other to halve his work with another colleague at the same level in the hierarchy and the last is to hire two subordinates to do his work. The norm is to hire two subordinates. He would not retire and lose his pension or other perks and he would not hire another at his own level because that would be competition for him. Time will come when one of the two subordinates will complain of too much work. He will hire two more subordinate for the first subordinate. Now the second subordinate cannot be ignored, hence he too will get two subordinates. Now we have seven people doing the work which A used to do. Now the promotion of A who is charge of the six subordinates is almost certain.
The paperwork increases, one creates work for the other and all seven are fully occupied and in fact all are working harder than before. One document that comes in goes to all seven starting at the lowest level and each makes modifications and amendments for the same final outcome. A stage will reach when A will start signing documents without reading since he is so overwhelmed with paperwork and other things which are on his mind. Considering the way things are going, invariably the number of administrators will increase with time. This increase in number of workers cannot be accounted for except for the fact that the rise in numbers is due to the law governing growth which says that the total must keep rising in the civil service.
One of the problems facing the government and other businesses is the selection of personnel. In the past there used to be two methods of selecting the right candidate, the British or the Chinese method.
The British method of the old days was an interview where the identity of the candidate was established and his relationship to important and well known personalities was the important criteria of selection. When there were two candidates who were equally well connected, then the person who was sly although dishonest would be selected. The person who was honest was rejected because he lacked initiative.This method of personnel selection did serve its purpose well for the British civil service in those days.
The other method of personnel selection those days was the Chinese method which was widely copied by other nations who did not know that it was of Chinese origin. The Chinese system under the Ming Dynasty consisted of Competitive Written Examinations. The candidates had to go through several examinations and the successful candidates (perhaps two per cent) then sat for their final examination at the imperial capital. Majority of those successful in this final examination were admitted to the civil service, the man with the highest marks being destined for the highest office. This system worked well too.
The Chinese system attracted the attention of the Europeans and in 1832 the English East India Company adopted the system and in 1855 the system of competitive examination was introduced into the British Civil Service.
“Injelititis or Palsied Paralysis”
We often look around us in every type of organization, be it administrative, commercial, or academic and wonder why higher officials are dull and are slowly moving around, dragging their feet and those less senior appear to like each other in public but in private they cannot work with each other while the junior staff are frustrated and feel unimportant. Nothing appears to be happening and nothing appears to being down. What is the cause of this organizational paralysis?The paralysis is due to a disease called Injelititis which results from an inferiority complex in individuals. It is usually self induced and progress is encouraged, symptoms welcomed and causes aggravated. It a common disease and the diagnosis is easy but cure is difficult.
The first sign of the disease is the appearance of an individual in an organization who has a dangerous combination of two traits,incompetence and jealousy. These two elements are commonly present in most individuals but in small proportions. However in some individuals the concentrations are very high and fusion of these two elements, according to Parkinson, results in the production of a new substance called “injelitance”. The presence of such a substance becomes obvious when you see an individual who having not achieved anything for his own department is seen constantly interfering in other departments and trying to gain control of the central administration. This peculiar mix of failure and ambition is described as "Primary or idiopathic injelitance."
Once this infected individual gains partial or complete control of the central organization, the disease has reached the second stage. The injelitant individual will now persist and struggle to remove, all those abler than him, from the organization and prevent the appointment and promotion of those abler than himself. As a result of this the central administration gradually gets filled up with people who are more stupid than the chairman, director, or the manager. When the head of the organization is second-rate, he will make sure that his immediate staff are all third-rate; and the immediate staff will make sure that their subordinates are fourth-rate.
Ultimately no bright spark will be left in the organization from top to bottom and that is when last stage of the disease is reached. The organization goes into a coma and the organization can remain in this stage for years. Sometimes it quietly disintegrates and very rarely it recovers spontaneously.
This spontaneous recovery results when an individual with merit works his way up under disguise as a stupid person who wanders around giggling, losing documents, forgetting names and looking and acting like all the other imbeciles around him. Once he is at the top, the disease is in retreat and full recovery is possible over time.However, Parkinson reiterates that such natural cures are uncommon or extremely rare and most of the time the disease remains in the organization without a cure.
What then are the symptoms of “Injelititis or Palsied Paralysis”?
In an organization infested by injelititis third-rateness becomes a principle of policy and the standards of achievement are set very low. Low standards are desired and still lower standards are acceptable and high standards of competence are not desirable. The directives issued by second rate chiefs to third rate executives “speak only of minimum aims and ineffectual means”. An efficient organization is not desired for the simple reason that an efficient organization would be beyond the chief’s power to control.
The secondary stage of the disease is characterised by smugness which is its chief symptom. Since the aims have been set rather low, they therefore are easily achieved. The chiefs have achieved what they set out to do and they gloat with self-satisfaction. The self-satisfaction reaches such a point that those responsible cannot tell the difference between good and bad. This smugness becomes absolute.
The final or tertiary stage of the disease is one where apathy takes the place of smugness. The executives now no longer boast of their efficiency as compared with other institutions since they have forgotten that other institution exists. Everything starts to fall apart at this stage. At this stage the institution is for all purposes dead with no hope of any cure.
Conclusion
It is about 60 years since Parkinson’s book was written but corporate and civil bureaucracy appears to be still all around us. Many have deplored bureaucracy but it still constitutes an essential component of our organizations. There is an urgent need to discover better ways of leading, organizing and managing in the future. There is a need for employee engagement, more innovation and resilience. The culture of filling forms has to abandoned and the manager's time should be spent talking and engaging with the employees. The smart individuals who are competent should be allowed to hold position at all levels of an organization and employees should be allowed to manage themselves.References
- Parkinson CN. Parkinson’s law: or, The pursuit of progress. London: J. Murray; 1958.
- Merriam-webster dictionary at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Parkinson%27s%20Law accessed on 14/9/2017.
- Parkinson C.N. Parkinson’s Law and other studies in administration (Buccaneer Books,Cutchogue, 1957).
- Klimek P. Lambiotte R. & Thurner S. Europhys. Lett.. 2008;82, 2, 28008 .
- Beate Jochimsen. Determinants of service quality in bureaucracy: Parkinson’s theory at work. Diskussionsbeiträge des Fachbereichs Wirtschaftswissenschaft der Freien Universität Berlin Volkswirtschaftliche Reihe June 2007.http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-Law.pdf
