Parkinson's Law: A Book That Should Be Required Reading At All Colleges

It was written by C. Northcote Parkinson. Click here to go to the Amazon listing. Here is there description:

"Parkinson's Law states that 'work expands to fill the time available'. While strenuously denied by management consultants, bureaucrats and efficiency experts, the law is borne out by disinterested observation of any organization. The book goes far beyond its famous theorem, though. The author goes on to explain how to meet the most important people at a social gathering and why, as a matter of mathematical certainty, the time spent debating an issue is inversely proportional to its objective importance. Justly famous for more than forty years, Parkinson's Law is at once a bracingly cynical primer on the reality of human organization, and an innoculation against the wilful optimism to which we as a species are prone."

Where they say "as a matter of mathematical certainty, the time spent debating an issue is inversely proportional to its objective importance" it refers to a section where a committee spends very little time debating a mult-million dollar nuclear power plant but they spend way more time discussing what refreshments to serve in the break room (or something like that). I think if you like the Dilbert comic strip, you will like this book. It humorously describes many of the ways bureaucracies are disfunctional.

By the way, the "C" in C. Northcote Parkinson stands for Cyril. Yes, I was named after him (of course I was, since I was born after he was I was named after he was named).

This site has a good sampling of some of his brilliant insights: C. Northcote Parkinson Quotes. Some deal with economics like "Expenditures rise to meet income."