An organization's remit expands past its original purpose and capacity, one reasonable step at a time.
US military usage from the 1990s, originally about Somalia. Each expansion is defensible on its own terms, which is why the aggregate is rarely noticed until capacity has already been exceeded.
In practice
- A regulator created to license three activities is licensing eleven a decade later, each addition having been a reasonable response to something.
- A team's remit grows by one adjacent responsibility a quarter until it cannot do the original job.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- The folklore of office life