THE APPLICATION OF QUEUING THEORY TO THE SPAN OF CONTROL
Abstract
The supervisor- orker relationship is considered to be a waiting-line situation where the supervisor is the service unit. Generation of the waiting line is a stochastic process. If there is too much demand on the supervisor, there is an excess of worker waiting time. With too little demand, there is too much idle servic time. Too many subordinates may mean loss ofADEQUATE C NTROL. Too many supervisors may be a costly extravagance and may also create too many organizational levels thereby increasing the difficulties of communication. The idea is to seek a trade-off between worker waiting time and supervisory costs. A cost model is presented which can be used to estimate the span of control for varying service times and cost inputs. Factors influencing the service time are taken into account. The model is predicated on finite queuing theory. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1962
- Accession Number
- AD0283392
Entities
People
- L.s. Hill
Organizations
- RAND Corporation