Reporting Relationships is a very important part of most organizational structures. This is how a company holds accountability and rewards employee’s based upon professional actions. Especially as organizations are incorporating synergy (team based functional cooperation), the reporting strategies are getting confused. A person functioning in a unit in this fashion may not know which department manager they are ultimately accountable too. This can be critical to a corporate organization where an employee functioning independently might not be held accountable for professional failures and similar negative organizational impacts. And thus the need to establish reporting relationships to maintain organizational professionalism.
Illustration of an organization chart, retrieved from: http://www.window.state.tx.us/tspr/elpaso_cc/chapt11a.htm
EstChain of Command is the simplest structure and outline for reporting relationships. Similar to military function, all persons report to the next person who holds them accountable, and on up the chain. This basic concept is called the “scalar principle”. Another key point to the chain of command is the “unity of command” theory. This ideal implies that everybody has one and only one boss to answer too, and thus should never be confused when working inter-departmentally on whom to answer too. Establishing reporting relationships is an essential building block to determining the chain of command and span of control within an organization.
HumanConcepts Suite is an organization chart software program designed to allow you to visualize and better understand your organization’s structure. It also allows you access to individual profiles which contain human resource information, span of control, etc. Read more at http://www.humanconcepts.com and refer to the video below for a basic overview.
To create a basic organization chart one can easily utilize Microsoft Office. The following video will describe how to use Power Point to create a basic Organizational Chart.
Span of Control as related to reporting relationships is a broad category to define. The span of management covers narrow and wide, tall and short. A narrow span is where a manager has very few subordinates who answer to him. In comparison a wide is the opposite and can cover a large group of workers in varying departments. Tall vs. flat spans of control are very complimentary and similar to wide and narrow formats. A tall organization is usually the result of the narrow span, and results in many layers of management. A flat organization usually has a very wide scope as managers can cover and are responsible for many subordinates. Allowing for fewer levels of management and typically higher job satisfaction. This is the result of the CEO and the lowest levels being closer together in the chain of command.
Cartoon retrieved from http://getdowntobusiness.typepad.com/rdjohnson/2012/11/controlling-your-span-of-control.html
One method in determining the span of control is the Graicunas theory. Although some find it places more importance on relationships, this theory can still be used to determine the number of subordinates by ascertaining the maximum number of relationships one should have. The picture below is an example of this theory in use where n is the number of subordinates and r is the total number of relationships.
Image and information retrieved from http://kalyan-city.blogspot.com/2011/08/graicunas-theory-of-span-of-control.html
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