Here’s one from Charles Dickens:-

https://www.panarchy.org/dickens/circumlocution.html

and the word ‘sclerotic’ is also relevant, in the context of ‘sclerotic management’:-

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sclerotic

Also associated with ‘Byzantine’ is ’Barquentine’, the Master of Ritual in Melvin Peake’s ‘Gormenghast’:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barquentine_(Gormenghast)

A barquentine was an ancient sort of boat, but this Barquentine wielded enormous power to ensure that the ancient rituals were carried out, often at enormous length, even after their original usefulness, if they indeed ever had any, was over and done with.

This brings to mind the four extremely complex and interlocking upstream systems that we interacted with many times a day, and which I managed to get shut down for my client in 2019, after we discovered that no new useful data had been processed by any of them since 2013.

Roy

Sent from my iPad

>> On 17 Mar 2020, at 12:41, Johnson, Tracy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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> Looking for some literature metaphors (besides Byzantine) for an
> organization that is too large and compartmented to get anything done.
> Emphasis on humor, stupidity, and lack of common sense.
> 
> (Byzantine is over-used.)
> 
> --
> Tracy Johnson
> BT
> 
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> NNNN
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