A…powerful tendency operates within the modern corporate enterprise. Personal prestige and position in any organization turns in substantial measure on the number of one’s subordinates. And one’s comfort and contentment are notably improved by the availability of subordinates to whom tedious thought and duty can be passed. Therefore the first instinct of anyone appointed to a corporate post at any level above the lowest is to acquire the assistants who are so serviceable to both prestige and ease of effort. From this, in turn, comes the powerful dynamic of bureaucratic expansion.

Economics in Perspective: A Critical History
–John Kenneth Galbraith