BUS272 TB

460 Part 5 Reorganizing the Workplace
Sometimes lower-level employees don’t follow the chain of command and engage in
creative deviance that results in very successful ideas, as Case Incident—Creative Deviance:
Bucking the Hierarchy? on page 483 shows.
Span of Control
Span of control refers to the number of employees who report to a manager. This
number will vary by organization, and by unit within an organization, and is determined
by the number of employees a manager can efficiently and effectively direct. In
an assembly-line factory, a manager may be able to direct numerous employees, because
the work is well defined and controlled by machinery. A sales manager, by contrast,
might have to give one-on-one supervision to individual sales reps, and, therefore,
fewer would report to the sales manager. All things being equal, the wider or larger the
span, the more efficient the organization. An example can illustrate the validity of this
statement.
Assume that we have two organizations, both of which have approximately 4100
operative-level employees. As Exhibit 13-2 illustrates, if one has a uniform span of 4 and
the other a span of 8, the wider span would have 2 fewer levels and approximately 800
fewer managers. If the average manager earned $56 000 a year, the wider span would
save about $45 million a year in management salaries. Obviously, wider spans are more
efficient in terms of cost. However, at some point when supervisors no longer have time
to provide the necessary leadership and support, a wider span reduces effectiveness and
has a negative effect on employee performance.
Narrow or small spans have their advocates. By keeping the span of control to 5
or 6 employees, a manager can maintain close control. 6 But narrow spans have three
major drawbacks. First, as already described, they are expensive because they add levels
of management. Second, they make vertical communication in the organization more
complex. The added levels of hierarchy slow down decision making and tend to isolate
upper management. Third, narrow spans of control encourage overly tight supervision
and discourage employee autonomy.
The trend in recent years has been toward wider spans of control. 7 Wider spans of
control are consistent with recent efforts by companies to reduce costs, cut overhead,
speed up decision making, increase flexibility, get closer to customers, and empower
employees. However, to ensure that performance does not suffer because of these wider
EXHIBIT 13-2 Contrasting Spans of Control
(Highest)
Members at Each Level
Assuming span of 4
Assuming span of 8
Organizational Level
1
2
3
4
5
6
1
4
16
64
256
1024
1
8
64
512
4096
7
4096
span of control The number of
employees that report to a manager.
(Lowest)
Operatives
= 4096 Operatives
= 4096
Managers (Levels 1–6) = 1365
Managers (Levels 1–4) = 585