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What does Parkinson's law teach us?

Parkinson, by studying the evolution of the British navy during the first half of the 20th century, noted an inflation over time of non-directly productive personnel.

Parkinson's law is a direct consequence of social ambition: to rise in the social hierarchy, the majority of people want to become 'leaders', that is to say command instead of doing things directly.
Furthermore, when resources become scarce, which leads to what we modestly call restructuring, one might believe that it is the non-production people who are fired first, but this is not the case, because they have more time to devote to the intrigue to defend their job, and are closer to the decision-making sources.

Consequences of Parkinson's Law

The right-wing myth: to reduce public spending, we must subcontract to private companies which are more efficient.
False: Private companies are more efficient... when they are younger. After a few years, we have more non-production since we also have in non-production: a state service which only awards contracts, a commercial service which only responds to them.

The left-wing myth: to improve public services, you just need to increase resources.
False: After a few years, public services become inefficient again, because the non-directly productive workforce has continued to increase.

Conclusion : pour avoir des services publics plus satisfaisants, la seule solution, c'est de bien comprendre la loi de Parkinson, et de lutter, pied à pied, en permanence, contre l'inflation des effectifs hors production.

Go deeper

Wikipedia article explaining Parkinson's Law

See question 'What is Lean Manufacturing?'
See also chapter 2'Widespread nepotism' from the book From capital to reason.

 

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