Meaning of Span of Management:
The term Span of Management is also known as Span of Control or Span of Authority or Span of Supervision. Simply stated Span of Management means the number of subordinates that a manager can effectively manage. This concept implies that the number of subordinates directly reporting to a superior should be limited so as to make supervision and control effective, because executives have limited time and ability. It is an accepted proposition that the larger the number of subordinates reporting directly to a manager, the more difficult it will be for him to supervise and coordinate their activities effectively.
What is an Ideal Span?
It is sometimes suggested that the span of management should neither be too wide nor too narrow. Then, the question arises as to how many persons a supervisor can manager effectively. Some experts tell that the ideal span is 4 at higher levels and 8 to 12 at lower levels. But the number of subordinates cannot be easily determined because the nature of jobs and capacity of individuals vary from organization to organization.
Classical View of Span of Management
The first person to draw attention to the principle of span of management was a British General, Sir Iaan Hamilton (1920) who said that the average human brain can be effective in handling from 3 to 6 other brains. After a lengthy study of military organisations, he concluded that the span should be smaller at the top of the organisation, where thought processes were more complicated and that it should set progressively larger toward the lower levels, where thought processes were less complicated and more routine.
V.A. Graicunas (1933) suggested that as the number of subordinates increases arithetically, the number of potential relationships, between the superior and subordinates increases geometrically. For example, Graicunas indicates that if a superior manages 2 subordinates, there are actively 6 different relationships. Thus, he pointed out that an increase in the number of subordinates causes almost an explosive growth in the number of possible relationships. Hence, only number of bodies in a span should not be counted, but the multifarious relationships generated by the numbers must also be recognized while deciding for the span of individual manager.
Classical writers advocated a span of control ranging from 3 to 7 or 8 persons at the higher levels and a span of 20 to 30 persons at the lowest level.