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management often is a perk,...

That's where we disagree, I am sorry to say. I know of no instance where the board of directors would think along the lines, "We had a good year; let's have a nice Holiday and hire some more managers --- we can afforded it this year." No company thinks of managers as a perk.

... especially when the number of people in management/administration expands without a commensurate increase in need.

With all due respect, but you cannot determine that need merely by working for an organization: you have to see the accounting books and be part of discussions by senior management. Driving a car for decades does not bring you an inch closer to understanding how and why it works: studying engineering and physics, respectively, is needed for that. And, even when you know both, you still have to see the data for a specific car to judge whether or not that particular car works properly. Same with management: one needs to know something about business/public administration and to have contemporaneous data to judge whether a particular decision was optimal.

Your supposition that market forces are the raw engine that drives the growth of management is not true

But neither you nor I ever said such a thing. You posed a question about managerial compensation, not the size of the management team. I pointed out that salaries are determined just like in all other cases --- by supply and deman in the labor market for managers. I also tried to explain that the issue of company size is completely unrelated to compensation: these two are determined by completely unrelated factors.

Sometimes, when people come up through the ranks, it is those who are least capable at doing the job at hand (e.g. physician, engineer, sales etc.) who focus their efforts on climbing the administrative ladder.

I completely agree with your observation but see nothing wrong with it: management requires completely different skills and knowledge than producing the product. Most certainly, I would not want a home building company to be run by a stone-cutter or carpenter.

Your view is a common one among specialists (I know, I held it myself in my early twenties :) Engineers often think that it is bad engineers and ars-kissers that get promoted. Well, thatnk goodness, that is true: as I said earlier, different skills and personal qualities are required.

Would you want a great driver to be promoted to an engineering position at a car company? Would you want a great nurse to be hired as a doctor? Probably not: "Go to a medical school, you'd say." It is often possible to rise to middle manager without schooling but hardly further. In the past, to be sure, one could become even a CEO that way --- especially if you have a considerable innate talent for that. Nowadays, people realize that it is easier to hire someone who knows something in business administration.

In any case, there is nothing wrong in that many managers are not great engineers, doctors, etc. I would be more concerned that they know something about accounting, finace, marketing and organizational behaviior, that they have descent interpersonal skills, etc.

Would you want the person who didn’t know how to design and build a good bridge to be the manager of your engineering company? Yes. In case you did not notice, the CEOs who was hired to redesign IBM was hired from... Pepsi Cola. He knew absolutely nothing about computers. But he completely redefined IBM in the early 1990s, when many people were predicting its complete demise. Please observe that one cannot achieve that result without having respect of the middle managers and the rest of the company. I am sure there were many skeptics who said the same thing: "He knows nothing about computers and high technology; we are not producing soft drinks." He (i) made them understand that , in what he personally does, that is unimportant, and (ii) deferred to experts in technical matters.

Since we are talking about this, incidentally, this is why CEOs are paid so much more than even middle managers: it requires talent to run a company, and much of it cannot be taught. Engineering, accounting, programming and other skills can be hired en masse. Both the essence of their jobs and the compensation of sentior managers are more close to basketball and movie stars, TV personalities, etc. It is a mistake to compare them to engineers.

However, in too many instances bureaucracy appears to be the best description. Of course it does.

Just go to the nearest university and walk into an of office of a theoretical physicist or mathematician. You'll find that (s)he is doing... "nothing" most of the time --- not even writing. In actuality, these are one of the most hardworking people you'll ever find, working --- thinking with an extreme and exhausting level of concentration --- 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week. But, if you are not familiar with the essence of their work, it will lool like they are doing nothing at all. [ Even simpler: how many times have you heard how overpaid professors are: "They just go to class twice a week for an hour, and get a ton of money." Of course, if you don't know what they do with the rest of the time, you'd think that they are overpaid lazy bums. ]

The point is that, when we are uninformed, many jobs seem unfairly compensated.