Parkinson's Progress: Accounting for the Number of Specialists in Organizations

TLDR: In this paper, the authors reviewed and examined the determinants of the supportive component in organizations and found that total employment in supportive activities displays a strong linear relationship to total organizational employment, with two clusters appearing around activities to support and control the workflow, and activities to maintain resources.

Abstract: The research on which this study is based was carried out at the Industrial Administration Research Unit, The University of Aston in Birmingham, England, and at the London Graduate School of Business Studies. It was supported by the Social Science Research Council. The author is grateful to Martin Evans, Roger Mansfield, Bruce Mayhew and Derek Pugh for their comments on a previous draft. Hypotheses on the determinants of the supportive component in organizations are reviewed and examined in the light of data from 54 British manufacturing companies. Total employment in supportive activities displays a strong linear relationship to total organizational employment. Spatial dispersion, technological complexity and the number of workflow divisions also provide a basis for predicting total employment in supportive activities. The supportive component is, however, a heterogeneous category, with two clusters appearing around activities to support and control the workflow, and activities to maintain resources. Moreover, total organizational employment does not strongly predict employment levels in all specialized supportive functions. Variables other than organizational size are associated with the numbers of individuals in specialized supportive categories in a way that is more complex than accounted for by available theories.