Talk:Parkinson's law

Parkinson vs. Peter
The penultimate sentence of the article mentions in passing that one chapter of Parkinson's Law documents the principle of promotion to the level of incompetence that has more recently been called the "Peter Principle" by people who've had the bad luck never to have read Parkinson.

I believe that this fact of prior publication deserves more than just a snippet of a run-on sentence and should have its own subsection. And I believe that the Peter principle article should be rewritten to acknowledge Parkinson's prior publication. Briankharvey (talk) 07:54, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Another Parkinson's Law?
Cut and pasted from: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-government-so-bad-at-doing-things-that-capitalism-naturally-excels-at-is-the-world-doomed-to-the-realities-of-capitalism-as-a-superior-social-system-and-henceforth-a-theory-of-human-nature-which-is-what/answer/Susanna-Viljanen: "economist and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson (of the Parkinson’s Laws fame) and he came to the conclusion that when an institution (private or public) grows larger than a certain limit, it becomes inefficient and bloated. This is the reason why monopolies - private or public - are inefficient. The underlying reason is the length of the feedback loops. This was affirmed by Donella Meadows in her 12 leverage points’ theorem." 74.127.200.151 (talk) 11:10, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

formula error?
I'm not familiar with this topic, I so I haven't changed anything, but the equation seems wrong (on dimensional and logical grounds) is it possible it should be m^k vs k^m in the numerator? 198.84.249.151 (talk) 10:29, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Criticisms section needed
No criticisms section? why not. 120.21.232.142 (talk) 11:45, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Two meanings
It seems pretty clear that the term “Parkinson's Law” is used in two meanings, and the article is currently a mixture of the two:


 * 1)  work expanding to fill the time available,
 * 2)  bureaucracy / number of employees tends to grow

I didn't look at the entire edit history, but it seems like basically people will keep adding the “other” meaning no matter what; here are some example edits:


 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parkinson%27s_law&diff=next&oldid=697856975
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parkinson%27s_law&diff=prev&oldid=791119771
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parkinson%27s_law&diff=prev&oldid=1162268038

Both have some validity (the former seems to have more popular usage, and the latter is the original), so it seems that if the article tries to insist on one meaning it will ultimately be short-lived as the other meaning will get added at some point. So it would be good to more explicitly mention the two meanings, and separate out sections that have to do with each. Shreevatsa (talk) 17:30, 23 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I've done that a bit. More clean-up may be needed. Shreevatsa (talk) 17:59, 23 April 2024 (UTC)