# Parkinson's Law > [!summary] > Parkinson's Law states that organizations tend to expand at 5-7% per year regardless of actual work requirements, driven by officials who prefer to multiply subordinates rather than rivals. C. Northcote Parkinson, a British naval historian, articulated his law in a 1955 essay in The Economist. The law has two components: 1. "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" 2. The number of workers within bureaucracy tends to grow, regardless of the amount of work to be done ## The Mechanism of Bureaucratic Growth Parkinson identified two forces that drive organizational expansion: **"An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals":** Managers enhance their status and power by expanding their departments. Having more subordinates increases prestige, justifies higher compensation, and strengthens political position within the organization. By contrast, creating peer-level positions threatens one's relative status. **"Officials make work for each other":** As bureaucracies grow, administrators create tasks that justify their existence and that of their colleagues. Coordination overhead, reporting requirements, and internal processes expand to fill available capacity, generating "busy work" that appears necessary but doesn't serve the organization's core mission. Parkinson observed that organizations typically grew at 5-7% per year, "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done." ## Historical Evidence Parkinson's original examples were striking: **British Admiralty:** Personnel rose from 2,000 in 1914 to 19,000 by 1928—a nearly tenfold increase—even as the number of ships and naval commitments declined sharply after World War I. The administrative apparatus expanded as the organization it administered shrank. **Colonial Office:** This office reached its peak staffing levels precisely as the British Empire was dissolving and the number of colonies being administered was declining. When the Colonial Office was finally folded into the Foreign Office due to lack of colonies to administer, it had more employees than ever. These examples reveal that bureaucratic growth follows its own logic, independent of—even inverse to—organizational needs. ## The Coefficient of Inefficiency Parkinson proposed that decision-making bodies become highly inefficient once they exceed a critical size between 19.9 and 22.4 members. Beyond this "Coefficient of Inefficiency," committees and boards become manifestly inefficient. The growth of administrative bodies typically goes hand in hand with a drastic decrease in overall efficiency. As organizations add more administrators, coordination costs rise, decision-making slows, and accountability diffuses. ## Relevance to Subdivision Parkinson's Law helps explain [[Why Large Institutions Don't Subdivide]]. Even when subdivision would improve efficiency and social cohesion, bureaucratic forces resist it: - Subdivision would reduce the number of subordinates reporting to senior managers - Breaking a large organization into smaller units would reduce empire-building opportunities - Administrators have incentives to maintain or expand their span of control - The bureaucracy creates self-justifying work that appears to require large, integrated structures Organizations grow through a ratchet effect: they expand readily but resist contraction or fragmentation. This makes natural subdivision—like the [[Fission-Fusion Dynamics]] of hunter-gatherer groups—nearly impossible in modern bureaucracies. ## Challenges and Limitations Some scholars argue that bureaucratic growth in the 20th century has multiple, complex causes that extend beyond Parkinson's simple formulation. Factors like world wars, expanded state functions, and technological change offer plausible alternative explanations for administrative expansion. However, the core insight remains valuable: organizations have intrinsic tendencies toward growth that operate independently of their actual functional requirements. This tendency must be actively resisted to maintain optimal organizational size. ## See Also - [[Why Large Institutions Don't Subdivide]] - [[Formal vs Informal Organization]] - [[Coordination Costs and Hierarchy]]