Management is a Social Science.

Well, at least those who study of management, leadership, organizational development and industrial psychology, call it a Social Science.

People steeped in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines might disagree as they are often confounded by the unpredictability of the human element. “Squishy. Too many intervening variables.”

In his 1952 novel Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut projected a future entirely automated world. A plant engineer summarized this STEM attitude to satiric perfection:

“If only it weren’t for the people, the goddamned people,” said Finnerty,“ always getting tangled up in the machinery. If it weren’t for them, earth would be an engineer’s paradise.”

There are many serious academic researchers in this field, but there are also many popular authors who make an observation and write a satirical treatise, calling it a Law or a Principle. It can’t be called serious science, but let’s look at three that have had a large impact on business language and practice:

• Murphy’s Law – “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.”
• Parkinson’s Law – “Work expands to fill the time allotted for the task.”
• The Peter Principle – “People rise to the level of their incompetence.

Murphy’s Law

In 1949, Captain Edward Murphy Jr. an US Air Force aerospace engineer worked at Edwards Air Force Base in California, testing how much gravitational acceleration/deceleration force (G-force) a human being could withstand. The team attached a jet engine to a rocket sled on rails and measured the force before testing on a human being. The first measurement showed zero force, despite the fact that the sled was clocked at over 200mph.

Upon inspection of the sled, Captain Murphy determined that a technician team, had installed four strain gauges backwards. In frustration, Murphy said,

“If there is any way to do it wrong, those guys will do it.”

Later, Captain Murphy’s boss, Captain John Stapp, asked by a reporter how they had achieved such a sterling safety record in the tests injuring no human subject, answered “because of our belief in Murphy’s Law, and our consistent effort to deny the inevitable.” Of course, the reporter asked what Murphy’s Law was, and Stapp replied “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.”

Stapp had a way with aphorisms. He was also known to say, “the universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment incredible.” Murphy’s Law, however, got better press, and stuck.

Murphy’s Law isn’t a new concept. Sod’s Law “If something can go wrong, it will”  has been a part of British culture for centuries. Perhaps, Murphy’s gained popularity, because of the press, or because it came from the US military, which brought us such memorable acronyms as SNAFU, and FUBAR.

Probably, Murphy’s Law’s fortunes were helped immensely by Arthur Bloch, who since 1970 has written over fifteen books extolling the inevitability of disaster contained in Murphy’s Law and its many corollaries:

• Nothing is as easy as it looks,
• Everything takes longer than you think it will,
• And in every field of endeavor,
• Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible moment.

Arthur Bloch collected all the corollaries including “Mother Nature is a bitch.” Murphy’s Law always produces knowing smiles from any audience.

Murphy’s Law has also become the go-to excuse for poor planning and inadequate risk assessment, somewhat akin to the clueless hippie response of the same period, “I dunno, man, Shit Happens.”

Parkinson’s Law

Cyril Northcote Parkinson was another military man, British Navy. C. Northcote Parkinson had an epiphany during World War II while stationed at a logistics base in the Pacific. Both his commanding officer and his boss went on leave. “Suddenly, there was nothing to do.”

Parkinson himself was temporarily transferred. When he returned, the theatre of the war had shifted. There was even less work to do, but the depot had added space and staff, and was consistently over budget and behind schedule. He mused to himself,

“Work expands to fill the allotted time and other resources, and the number of workers in a bureaucracy expands regardless of workload, because managers want subordinates, and officials make work for each other.”

After the war, Parkinson became a Naval historian, writing novels about eighteenth century sea captains. In 1955 he observed the budget of the Royal Navy increasing, while ships and sailors were decreasing. He also noticed that the Colonial Office bureaucracy was growing despite the number of British colonies shrinking.

Parkinson wrote a satirical article for “The Economist” laying all this out with charts, graphs and  a formula. This article later expanded to several books, and Parkinson’s Law entered the canon of Management and Organizational Science.

It is true that work expands to fill available time. This post was originally going to be about Murphy’s Law, but I’m retired, and have all the available time in the world.

It is also true that bureaucracies tend to grow without regard to the value of the work produced (in triplicate). But Parkinson’s Law has become the excuse for consultants and new executives to prescribe workforce reductions of twenty-percent and more without doing analysis of value or workload.

The Peter Principle

Laurence J. Peter, started his career as a teacher in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. In 1966, as an associate professor at the University of Southern California, he was promoted to be the Director of the Evelyn Frieden Centre for Prescriptive Teaching, and Coordinator of Programs for Emotionally Disturbed Children.

Peter observed that the Frieden Centre had hired him and several colleagues for their excellence at teaching, which in no way qualified them for their current role. He looked at several other organizations and realized that most organizations promoted people based upon performance in roles with different performance criteria than the role for which they were being hired.

If these newly promoted individuals, learned and excelled in the new role they were promoted again. If they did not excel they weren’t promoted again. Therefore,

“In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence… [I]n time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties… Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.” 

or

“The cream rises until it sours.”

Dr. Peter liked humorous aphorisms, such as “Noblest of all dogs is the hot dog, which feeds the hand that bites it.”

Dr. Peter partnered with Raymond Hull, a Vancouver playwright who also had an affinity for catchy sayings, “He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.” Together they produced The Peter Principle (Why things always go wrong).

The Peter Principle is another best-selling book based upon reflective realization rather than rigorous research. It is a logical premise, which suggests that people be hired based upon demonstrated ability for the job rather than performance in an unrelated position.

However, I have observed that the Peter Principle has most frequently been employed to explain why “my boss is an idiot.”

Against the Laws

These three concepts offer explanations about why things go wrong in organizations. They are all funny. Humor opens people’s minds so they can glimpse some universal truth, and I think each law, in its own way, does present a truth about people, management and organizations. They all suggest a solution:

• Murphy’s Law, “Whatever can go wrong, will,” suggests rigorous risk assessment and anticipation of unintended consequences.
• Parkinsons Law, “Work expands and administration makes work,” suggests rigorous time and resource allocation and periodic delayering.
• The Peter Principle “People rise to their level of incompetence,” suggests promoting based upon the new job, and a culture of continuous learning and evaluation.

All three, though, by their very popularity, undermine the reputation of Management Science. They ignore a century of serious research into management and organization, e.g., Mary Parker Follett in participative management, Kurt Lewin and George Litwin in organizational climate, Edgar Schein in organizational culture, Douglas Macgregor, Alfred Chandler, Peter Drucker, etc. I could go on.

Managers, leaders, and consultants continue to assert that “people stuff is common sense,” and “anyone can do it.” Then some predictable and avoidable disaster happens, and they chalk it up to one of these three “laws,” personifying the Murphy’s Law corollary called Higdon’s Law:

“Good judgement comes from bad experience.

Experience comes from bad judgement.”

Do we really have to make the same mistakes over and over again? How many times?

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