Fundamentals of Management, 11/e

4 What Is Span of Control?

Traditional View

How many employees can a manager efficiently and effectively supervise? This question of span of control received a great deal of attention from early management writers. Although they came to no consensus on a specific number, most favored small spans—typically no more than six workers—in order to maintain close control.11 However, several writers did acknowledge level in the organization as a contingency variable. They argued that as a manager rises in an organization, he or she has to deal with a greater number of unstructured problems, so top managers need a smaller span than do middle managers, and middle managers require a smaller span than do supervisors. Over the last decade, however, we’ve ...