Article

2006-03-26 International-UN-NGOs

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Fred 2006-03-26 00:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Given the Kofi succession plan, El Baradei must be the next incompetent in line for the job.

Posted by Captain America 2006-03-26 00:18|| 2006-03-26 00:18|| Front Page Top

#2 When I was Manager of a completely dysfunctional Department, known mainly as a serious drain on the company, I always found it effective to lecture the Board, too.

Posted by Snise Angomosing6920 2006-03-26 01:15|| 2006-03-26 01:15|| Front Page Top

#3 Great observation about Parkenson's Law, Fred. I learned about it when I was a kid. It's a fundamental law of the Universe. And when committees get to 21 members, the committee is doomed, doomed, I tell ya, doomed!

Posted by Alaska Paul">Alaska Paul 2006-03-26 01:31|| 2006-03-26 01:31|| Front Page Top

#4 Paul, No that's the Peter Principle, i.e. rising to the level of one's incompetence.

Parkinson's Law says that the capacity of a system (think computer memory or hard drive capacity, for example) will be overloaded by growing demand which was enabled by the increased capcity and that the capcity will need increasing which leads to a new cycle of overloading, etc.

Posted by Slarong Flirong5626 2006-03-26 09:08|| 2006-03-26 09:08|| Front Page Top

#5 Mohamed ElBaradei said the Security Councils efforts to control arms have not been systematic or successful in the case of Iraq, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but some of those aren't signatories to the NPT.

Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford 2006-03-26 12:00|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2006-03-26 12:00|| Front Page Top

#6 Was Parkinsons Law first applied to office opace, closet space or static memory?

Posted by 6 2006-03-26 12:32|| 2006-03-26 12:32|| Front Page Top

#7 Actually, it was to the British Colonial Office, which had a small number of people and many colonies in 1850, and a large number of employees for a much smaller number of colonies in 1950.

Parkinson pointed out the tendency of organizations to grow at a rate that's totally divorced from the actual amount of work done.

One of his corollaries was that small committees are more effective than large ones (take the total IQ of a committee, divide by membership, and the average IQ drifts closer and closer to average or even subnormal, a kind of reversal of synergy -- Pruitt's corollary to Parkinson's corollary. I believe you can also subtract a set number of IQ points for each member over a dozen to get the exact figure...) These committees, including the cabinet, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the UN, and the boards of major corporations, tend naturally to become larger, both through the addition of members and through the expansion of member's staffs, which gets them prestige points whether productivity increases or not.

The Peter Principle (people rise to their level of incompetence) came several years after Parkinson.

I love management theory. If you can pick up a copy of In Search of Excellence, do so, and read it from cover to cover. Virtually all the examples of effective companies used in the middle 80s (Fluor, People Express, Delta) are now out of business or also-rans, with the single exception of IBM, which ain't what it used to be.

What would we do without experts?

Posted by Fred 2006-03-26 19:45|| 2006-03-26 19:45|| Front Page Top

#8 Thrive?

Posted by Darrell 2006-03-26 19:49|| 2006-03-26 19:49|| Front Page Top

#9 Fred, Have your read Norm Augustine's book?

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-03-26 20:10|| 2006-03-26 20:10|| Front Page Top

#10 El Baradei has gone FAR BEYOND THE SCOPE of the Peter Principle. We need some kind of equivalent of the Unified Field Theory to explain the UN and the IAEA.

Maybe I will contact the ~~Rantburg~~ RAND Corporation tomorrow morning and we can slap a study on it.

Posted by Alaska Paul">Alaska Paul 2006-03-26 23:23|| 2006-03-26 23:23|| Front Page Top

17:57 Bizarre
00:00 mhw
23:47 JosephMendiola
23:29 Alaska Paul
23:23 Alaska Paul
23:16 Lone Ranger
23:14 Barbara Skolaut
23:14 Alaska Paul
22:54 Frank G
22:48 Iblis
22:46 Former O-Ganger
22:44 Ernest Brown
22:36 Mark E.
22:31 RWV
22:29 CrazyFool
22:27 Penguin
21:55 Barbara Skolaut
21:50 Barbara Skolaut
21:44 Flailet Unoper7560
21:30 Dave D.
21:28 xbalanke
21:22 Anonymoose
21:17 xbalanke
21:10 twobyfour