Talk:Parkinson's law/Archives/2012

Satire

This is not a Law in the legal meaning of the word, more of a Satire of a Law of nature.

I think that this note is completely unnecessary. Anyway someone should expand this article a bit and add some realworld examples. --Taw

Is this really a satire on the law of nature? Does work not expand the more time that is given? -Adrian.

It's a law like Murphy's law. It can't be proven scientifically, and hasn't really been thoroughly studied sociologically. But I don't think it's a satire, nor is it prophecy from on high. It's a commonly held belief invoked by the shorthand "Parkinson's Law."72.78.23.7 (talk) 19:49, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Example

Here's an example to this that I was told. I forgot the name of the involved company, but it was rather large. What happened is that in order to fight escalating bureaucracy, this company would freeze all its regular reports at the beginning at every new year, and reports would only resume once they were actually requested. Apparently it turned out that each year, 15% of the reports were never requested again. However, by the end of the year, the total volume of reports generated was back to what it was at the end of the previous year - that is to say, the amount of work saved by discontinuing 15% of the reports was eventually compensated for by the invention of new reports.

Here's a link to an excellent example of Parkinson's Law, which was penned by Parkinson, himself. See graph four, in particular. -- Schnaz 16:15, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Merely advising that I'm going to edit that stuff about "the law of cost and demand". No such "law". Parkinson's law, while we're at it, is an inductively posited relationship between certain behaviors and their outcomes and therefore does qualify as a theory, though not necessarily as a law, though Parkinson is obviously trying to be a humorous in any case. Should also say that I'm not the person writing at the start of this section (Jacko)

Another two laws?

There are more laws in the original book. Some of them are to be found on the Web:

Parkinson's Laws: 1) Work expands to fill the time available for its completion; the thing to be done swells in perceived importance and complexity in a direct ratio with the time to be spent in its completion. 2) Expenditures rise to meet income. 3) Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay. 4) The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done. 5) If there is a way to delay an important decision the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it. 6) The progress of science is inversely proportional to the number of journals published. [1]

Another one relates buildings and the importance of its institution. I didn't find a real quotation just remember it being there and it is mentioned on http://www.samuelgriffith.org.au/papers/html/volume4/v4conc.htm:

Parkinson's laws, namely that the importance of an institution is inversely proportional to the magnificence of the building in which it is housed.

I believe that Parkinson named this attempt to immortalize importance the "Edifice Complex", which is widely used as reference, recently bt John Stossel. I have often thought, though, that Parkinson should have amended it so that the Italic textefficacyItalic text of the institution is in decline in proportion to the magnificance of the edifice.

I have built several banks. Each had 15' to 20' ceilings in the main rooms. I asked the manager of the second why she had approved such high ceilings, but she could find no reason other than fashion. I'd like to see how this fits to any of Parkinson's various laws or correlaries.CBSanford 21:13, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

One of the other laws is detailed here. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:49, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Injelitance

Certainly, no article on Parkison is complete without a mention, if not a discussion, of his concept of injelitance -- the rise to authority of individuals with unusually high combinations of incompetence and jealousy. Here's a good link on the concept: How Do You Cure Injelitance? -- Schnaz 16:15, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

See Also

Not sure I get the relevance of the link to the "color of the bikeshed." Admittedly, it is very cool Wikijargon, but I don't think it's relevant here. -- Schnaz 16:26, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The bikeshed bits have nothing to do with wikijargon. This term (or analogy) has been around for a long time, and was popularized by Poul-Henning Kamp of The FreeBSD Project on the mailinglists.

It also has quite a bit of relevance, as the observation formulated as the bikeshed analogy bears a direct and bilateral relation to Parkinson's observations on the workings of committees and such. Zuiram 01:15, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

It is discussed about 6 minutes into this Google talk presentstion [2]. Smmurphy^(Talk) 18:21, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Just pasting a quote from this book which is relevant to this item:

If true, that law is not a minor flaw in scientific reasoning. The law is completely nihilistic. It is a catastrophic logical disproof of the general validity of all scientific method!

If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.

-- Sy / ^(talk) 12:07, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Removed text re: Moore's Law

Pulled most of this paragraph:

In time, however, the first-referenced meaning of the phrase has dominated, and sprouted several corollaries: for example, the derivative relating to computers: "Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed over the last 10 years that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for a constant price also tends to double about once every 24 months (see Moore's Law); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely.

...for three reasons:

1. It constitutes a somewhat irrelevant aside; the rate of increase of storage capacity is unconnected to Parkinson's Law.

1. The data in the paragraph is unsourced, and is neither common knowledge or included in Parkinson's Law.

1. The implied conclusion - that there is an imminent shortage that will arise when memory density stops increasing - is not sufficiently supported by the data cited.

Robin Z 00:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Removed text re: thermodynamics

Removed this uncited assertion per WP:SYNTH:

There is a parallel between Parkinson's law and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in as far as both describe the limitations of systems. Both describe how processes are capable of, and expected to occupy the available space for expression within a system, Parkinson describing the effects within Bureaucracies, and the 2nd Law for within all physical systems. The parallels are not exact, but striking enough to make Parkinson's Law a subset of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as applied to Bureaucracies

If anybody has a source, feel free to cite and revert. Spinality (talk) 18:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Ya know, I tend to think of something else when I hear the name "Parkinson's"...

Has anyone here ever heard of Parkinson's disease? It can’t be a coincidence that they’d have the same name, can it? …But, if I'm right, and the monkier of "Parkinson" isn’t a coincidence, then why are they named after the same guy? --Luigifan (talk) 20:14, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You're on Wikipedia, for cryin' out loud. It would've taken you four seconds to find out they're not named after the same guy. You even wikilinked to the Parkinson's disease article! This must have been intended as some joke I didn't get. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.201.43.165 (talk) 20:38, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Literature missing

As Small wrote above in == Another two laws? ==

There are more laws in the original book. Some of them are to be found on the Web ...

The original reference, Parkinson's book, is missing. I can recommend to read the complete book! --Hans W (talk) 12:59, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Razor

I remember hearing about this law referred to as a razor but for the life of me I can't remember the name, can somebody help me out

68.106.5.112 (talk) 04:14, 15 November 2010 (UTC)Soldier.moth

Is it possible you were thinking of Occam's razor, a different postulate entirely? Or, up one level of meta-ness, we have Razor (philosophy), a definition of what "Razor" means when used in philosophy. keɪɑtɪk flʌfi (talk) 13:10, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks but nope, it had the same meaning as Parkinson's Law but was called _____'s Razor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.106.5.112 (talk) 00:41, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation

I think that this page needs disambiguation : Parkinson's Law is not only the adage (which this article talk about at the present) but also a whole book (official name: Parkinson's Law of the Pursuit of the Progress), and just the first part of first chapter is about that adage. --Uno nessuno e 100000 (talk) 15:39, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The current form of the law is not that which Parkinson refers to by that name in the article.

This needs to be clarified. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.103.145 (talk) 07:34, 8 October 2010 (UTC)