"The smaller the function, the greater the management"
About this Quote
Parkinson’s barb lands because it flips the official story of management on its head. We like to pretend bureaucracy is a rational response to complexity: bigger mission, bigger machinery. Parkinson suggests the opposite pathology: shrink the actual work and the managerial superstructure swells to fill the void, like foam expanding in an empty cavity.
The intent is satirical but diagnostic. As a historian of institutions, Parkinson was watching empires and offices alike: when purpose fades, procedure becomes purpose. A “smaller function” is a narrowed remit, an obsolete department, a project that’s been tamed into routine. Instead of winding down, the organization invents new layers of oversight, meetings, reporting lines, and performance rituals to justify its continued existence. Management becomes a self-referential economy, producing not outcomes but proof-of-management.
The subtext is about status and self-preservation. Administrators don’t multiply because they’re stupid; they multiply because they’re incentivized. A small function is especially ripe for managerial inflation: the work is too meager to confer prestige on its own, so prestige is manufactured through hierarchy. Add a deputy, subdivide responsibilities, formalize approvals. The fewer the hard constraints of urgent production, the more room there is for politics, turf, and the soothing theater of “alignment.”
Context matters: Parkinson’s Law emerged in postwar Britain, when expanding civil services and corporate offices were mastering the art of paper. His line still reads like a memo from the present, aimed at any institution that confuses motion with progress and calls it governance.
The intent is satirical but diagnostic. As a historian of institutions, Parkinson was watching empires and offices alike: when purpose fades, procedure becomes purpose. A “smaller function” is a narrowed remit, an obsolete department, a project that’s been tamed into routine. Instead of winding down, the organization invents new layers of oversight, meetings, reporting lines, and performance rituals to justify its continued existence. Management becomes a self-referential economy, producing not outcomes but proof-of-management.
The subtext is about status and self-preservation. Administrators don’t multiply because they’re stupid; they multiply because they’re incentivized. A small function is especially ripe for managerial inflation: the work is too meager to confer prestige on its own, so prestige is manufactured through hierarchy. Add a deputy, subdivide responsibilities, formalize approvals. The fewer the hard constraints of urgent production, the more room there is for politics, turf, and the soothing theater of “alignment.”
Context matters: Parkinson’s Law emerged in postwar Britain, when expanding civil services and corporate offices were mastering the art of paper. His line still reads like a memo from the present, aimed at any institution that confuses motion with progress and calls it governance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Management |
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