Span of control and span of activity
By: Oriana Bandiera, Andrea Prat, Raffaella Sadun, Julie Wulf
Contributors: Prat, Andrea; Sadun, Raffaella; Wulf, Julie, 1956-; Harvard Business School
Edition: Rev.
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 12-053; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 12-053.
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2011
Place of publication: [Boston]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 32
Description: For both practitioners and researchers, span of control plays an important role in defining and understanding the role of the CEO. In this paper, we combine organizational chart information for a sample of 65 companies with detailed data on how their CEOs allocate their work time, which we define as their span of activity. Span of activity provides a direct measure of the CEO's management style, including the attention devoted to specific subordinates and functions, the time devoted to individual work and outside constituencies, a preference for multilateral or bilateral interaction, the degree of planning, etc. We find that CEOs with a larger number of reports spend more time with subordinates, more time on large meetings, less time on unplanned activities. The presence of a delegate, such as the COO, allows the CEO to reduce the time spent with insiders and to focus on bilateral and unplanned activities. These results suggest that time-use information is helpful in interpreting how span of control determines management style.
Notes: "December 2011, revised February 2012" -- Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references.