Page 193 - Fundamentals of Management Myths Debunked (2017)_Flat

192 Part 3 • Organizing
they have some control over what their bosses hear. It’s not unusual for a $105,000-a-year
middle manager to tread carefully in order not to upset the boss’s $45,000-a-year adminis-
trative assistant. Why? Because the assistant has power. This individual may be low in the
authority hierarchy but close to the power core.
Likewise, low-ranking employees who have relatives, friends, or associates in high
places might also be close to the power core. So, too, are employees with scarce
and important skills. The lowly production engineer with 20 years of
experience in a company might be the only one in the firm who knows
the inner workings of all the old production machinery. When pieces
of this old equipment break down, only this engineer understands
how to fix them. Suddenly, the engineer’s influence is much
greater than it would appear from his or her level in the vertical
hierarchy. What do these examples tell us about power? They
indicate that power can come from different areas. French and
Raven identified five sources, or bases, of power: coercive,
8
reward, legitimate, expert, and referent. We summarize
them in Exhibit 6–6.
(4) What Is Span of Control?

TradiTional View. How many employees can a
Jennifer S. Altman/Getty Images manager efficiently and effectively supervise? This ques-
Melissa Brenner, senior vice president of tion of span of control received a great deal of attention
marketing for the National Basketball
Association, has expert power. Her expertise from early management writers. Although they came to no consensus on a specific number,
in using Facebook, Instagram, and other most favored small spans—typically no more than six workers—in order to maintain close
social media in innovative ways is helping control. However, several writers did acknowledge level in the organization as a contingency
9
the NBA achieve its goal of enhancing fans’
engagement and enjoyment of the game variable. They argued that as a manager rises in an organization, he or she has to deal with
throughout the world. 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 seen some change in theories about effective spans of control. 10

Today’s View. Many organizations are increasing their spans of control. The span for
managers at such companies as General Electric and Kaiser Aluminum has expanded sig-
nificantly in the past decade. It has also expanded in the federal government, where efforts
11
to increase the span of control are being implemented to save time in making decisions.
The span of control is increasingly being determined by looking at contingency variables.

How Many People Can I Effectively and Efficiently Manage?
Most effective and efficient span depends on:
• Employee experience and training (more they have, larger span)
• Similarity of employee tasks (more similarity, larger span)
• Complexity of those tasks (more complex, smaller span)

Exhibit 6–6 Types of Power

Coercive power Power based on fear.
Reward power Power based on the ability to distribute something
that others value.
Legitimate power Power based on one’s position in the formal hierarchy.
Expert power Power based on one’s expertise, special skill, or knowledge.
span of control Referent power Power based on identification with a person who has
The number of employees a manager can efficiently desirable resources or personal traits.
and effectively supervise