Cyril Northcote Parkinson fue un historiador naval y autor de unos sesenta libros. Es conocido principalmente por su extensa obra como académico en el campo de la administración pública. Su contribución más famosa es la Ley de Parkinson, que describe humorísticamente la tendencia del trabajo a expandirse para llenar todo el tiempo disponible. El perspicaz análisis de Parkinson sobre los principios organizativos y la naturaleza humana ofrece observaciones atemporales para los lectores.
A fictional biography chronicling the rise of Horatio Hornblower from a midshipman in 1794 to a revered admiral of the fleet in 1847. Northcote Parkinson has evoked life at sea in a British man o'war with the detail paid to the minutiae of naval life during the Napoleonic period. Originally published in 1970 by PENGUIN.
A must read. Many of our everyday decisions are (or should have been) based upon Parkinson's insights. For example, he wrote "Work expands to fill the time allotted for it". If you schedule more time, you'll create more tasks to accomplish a particular goal. The many corollaries derived from this law are significant. “Junk expands to fill the space allotted for it”. Regardless of how much storage space we create, we’ll accumulate junk that will exceed the allotted space. The more highways we build the more traffic jams we create. He described how in many organizations people rise to the “level of their incompetence”. He noted the significance of an organization that has created excellent offices, beautiful grounds and buildings or excellent bureaucratic efficiency. Healthy growing organizations are always in chaos. The great Marble houses of banks and railroad terminals foretold the decline of those industries relative significance. When you’re busy growing and creating, you don’t have time or resources to devote to your own self admiration.
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.
This novel tells the story of an orphaned daughter of a cabaret dancer and her rise from poverty and anonymity to film stardom, all set against the rise and fall of Berlin, the background of WWI, the debauchery of the Weimar era, the run-up to WWII, and the innovations in art and industry that accompanied it all.
For the ambitious executive who wants to keep maintain the advantage over his competitors, the secrets of business administration. Topics include the art of choosing the proper father-in-law, the avoidance of paper work, how to dominate a meeting, the function and qualifications of business consultants, the annual report and how it can be used to adjust stock prices, and the Parkinsey Report.
