A note on calculating the average span of control

Excerpt

On pages 168–169, Blau and Scott’s (1962) classic book presents a formula for determining the average span of control of a hierarchical organization. This formula returns an organization’s average span of control (S) as a function of the organization’s number of employees (N) and supervisory levels (L) assuming every employee with reporting subalterns has an identical span of control. The average span of control is a useful summary statistic of an organization, as it provides an approximate understanding of the organization’s structure and management processes. For instance, if an organization with 1,000 employees had an average S of 20, one would know that the organization must be quite flat and that managers would have little time to monitor and interact with their many subalterns. The opposite would be true if one knew that the same organization has an average S of, say, 2.3 (for classic articles on span of control, see Ouchi and Dowling 1974 and Van Fleet and Bedeian 1977; for examples of how the concept is used, see Khandwalla 1977, Burton and Obel 2004, and Daft 2010). Referring to the “average span of control” of an organization is common; for example, at the time of writing, Google and Google Scholar return 8820 and 532, respectively, for the exact term in quotes. …