One of the easiest things to determine about a company by looking at its organization chart is its span of control. This exercise will allow you to learn about and compare span of control within companies in your area.

Questions for Discussion

1. How easy or difficult was it to find organization charts on the Internet?
2. Did you find that there were differences with respect to span of control?
3. Were spans of control different at different organizational levels? If so, how? And, were these differences the same for all industry groups?
4. In what ways did spans of control differ for the various industry groups? Were the spans broader for some industries and narrower in others? How do you explain these differences?
Do these differences make sense to you?

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Directions 1. Divide the class into four equal-size groups. 2. Assign one of the following industry types to each group: (a) manufacturing companies, (b) financial institutions, (c) public utilities, and (d) charities. 3. Within the industry assigned to each group, identify one company per student. Also, consider larger organizations inasmuch as these are more likely to have formal organization charts. For example, if there are five students in the "financial institutions" group, name five different banks or savings and loan institutions. 4. Each student should search the Internet for a copy of the organization chart for the company assigned to him or her in step 3. 5. Meet as a group to discuss the spans of control of the organizations in your sample. 6. Gather as a class to compare the findings of the various groups.