Span Of Control Research Paper

Span of control refers to the employee/supervisor ratio. It indicates the number of employees that a manager or supervisor is responsible for within a department. “For such purposes, it is reasonable to define the supervisor’s span in terms of the total number of subordinates over whom he has authority, responsibility, or control”. (Ouchi & Dowling, 1974, p. 357). Also known as the high hierarchy or organizational chart, the span of control defines the measure in which communication is presented and hold certain managers/supervisors responsible for distributing work within an organization or a department. In addition, the span of control affects the organization by holding a manager responsible to for keeping with the workflow and affects management more as it requires a certain amount of time to plan providing supervision and performing tasks to keep the operation of the department functioning.
Centralized decision-making within an organization is a few key managers making a decision based on the need of the operation of an organization while decentralized decision-making is when CEO or Executive Managers determine and make the decisions. I believe that centralized decision-making works better for an organization as departmental managers are familiar with the daily functions, what works and what does not work and typically have a personal …show more content…
The inability to show learned skills impacts the role I have in the organization as it hinders advancing to a higher level position. As a Manager/Supervisor to subordinates, they are more likely to be reluctant to trust the information being provided to them and I found that they were bypassing me and going directly to my manager. Therefore, effective delegation proves to be in the best interest towards organization