Adage that work expands to fill its available time
Parkinson's law can refer to either of two observations, published in 1955 by the naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson as an essay in The Economist:[1]
- "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion",
- the number of workers within public administration, bureaucracy or officialdom tends to grow, regardless of the amount of work to be done. This was attributed mainly to two factors: that officials want subordinates, not rivals, and that officials make work for each other.
The first paragraph of the essay mentioned the first meaning above as a "commonplace observation", and the rest of the essay was devoted to the latter observation, terming it "Parkinson's Law".
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