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UNDER THE MICROSCOPE:PARKINSON’S LAW – “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” – was coined in 1958 by C Northgate Parkinson, a naval historian, theorist of bureaucracy and humorist. This “law” is now part of mainstream thinking. When you first hear it you immediately think that it has a ring of truth. Parkinson’s Law has now stood the rigorous test of mathematical analysis, as reported by Mark Buchanan in New Scientist (January 10th, 2009).

Buchanan describes how Parkinson originally got his idea. He was working as Major Parkinson in 1944 at the joint army/navy headquarters in Britain and he was being deluged by paperwork from above. The chief of base went on leave, his deputy fell sick and Major Parkinson was left to carry on alone. The flood of paperwork suddenly stopped but otherwise things went on smoothly. Parkinson later mused: “There had never been anything to do. We’d just been making work for each other”. In 1958 Parkinson wrote a satirical book on human behaviour – Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress.