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An important task in structuring organizations, especially large ones, is determining what the span of control of managers or supervisors should be. The span of control, or span of management, refers to the number of persons who report to one superior and includes the functions of planning, organizing and leading. The span of management has a direct bearing upon the number of levels in an organization, which is a measure of the length of that organization's lines of communications. There are several factors to consider in order to establish the proper span of control for managers. In addition, the span of control will affect the attitudes and behavior of the organizational members.
Historically, the concern over span of control was based on the idea that some optimal number of manageable subordinates should exist. Researchers in the past, such as Col. Urwick, stated that the optimal span of control was five or six. This as based on the assumption that managers have a limited span of attention, energy and time. If a manager was responsible for more than five or six subordinates, it was felt that the manager would loose track of what was happening. This was illustrated mathematically by A. V. Graicumas, whose work indicated that the number of potential interactions with subordinates will increase geometrically with respect to the manager's increasing span of control. For example, the addition of a fifth subordinate raises potential interactions from 44 to 100. Likewise, the addition of an eighth subordinate moves the potential from 490 to 1,080. Although only a small percentage of these interactions actually occur on a daily basis, the message conveyed is that at some point the addition of one more subordinate could create some serious problems for the manager.
Some studies refute the claim that the optimal span of control is five or six. The results of a 1952 study done by the American Management Association indicate that the median span of control for presidents of large companies (over 5,000 employees) is eight to nine with a range of up to 24. Presidents of medium-sized firms (500 to 5,000 employees) were found to have a median span of control of about seven and the range varied from three to 17. However, another recent analysis...