Not too narrow, not too broad: Linking span of control, leadership behavior, and employee job satisfaction in public organizations

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• Author: Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen,Ane‐Kathrine Lundberg Hansen,Lars Dahl Pedersen
• Date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13566

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Not too narrow, not too broad: Linking span of control,

leadership behavior, and employee job satisfaction

in public organizations

Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen

1

|Ane-Kathrine Lundberg Hansen

1

|Lars Dahl Pedersen

2

1

Crown Prince Frederik Center for Public

Leadership, Department of Political Science,

Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

2

Private Hospital Molholm, Vejle, Denmark

Correspondence

Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen, Aarhus University,

Bartholins Alle 7, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark.

Email: christianj@ps.au.dk

Abstract

How does organizational structure shape the role of leadership? Research emphasizes

the negative implications of broad spans of control, but theory and empirical research

about the span of control and leadership are sparse. We develop theoretical argu-

ments about the span of control and transformational, transactional, and distributed

leadership and argue that employees in units with medium-sized spans of control

observe more leadership and have higher job satisfaction. Furthermore, that span of

control can affect leadership behaviors differently. The arguments are tested on multi-

level survey data from 393 nursing managers and 1699 nurses in Danish hospitals. We

find that employees experience more leadership behavior and higher job satisfaction

under medium spans of control compared to narrow and broad spans of control. Con-

sequently, span of control should still be considered an important aspect of organiza-

tional design when active leadership behavior and high employee job satisfaction are

warranted.

Evidence for Practice

•Span of control is important for public leadership and employee job satisfaction.

•Employees on average experience more active leadership behavior and report

higher job satisfaction if their leader has a medium-sized span of control.

•The negative implications of broad and narrow spans of control should always

be balanced against other organizational considerations.

Leadership in public organizations is a topic of much

academic interest (Bundgaard et al., 2021), and studies

have related leadership behavior positively with desired

outcomes such as performance and satisfaction and neg-

atively with detrimental outcomes such as turnover

(Backhaus & Vogel, 2022). Thus, leadership is an important

factor in the provision of well-functioning and effective

public organizations (Oberfield 2012; Van Wart 2013). Typ-

ically, leadership takes place in an organizational context

that can shape interactions between managers and

employees (Antonakis & Atwater, 2002). The organiza-

tional context encompasses numerous aspects related

to goals, resources, and hierarchy, which can interfere

with the role of management (O’Toole & Meier 2015).

One particularly relevant organizational factor with direct

implications for interactions between managers and

employees is the span of control; that is, the number of

subordinates a manager oversees (Bohte & Meier, 2001).

Span of control has been discussed in public adminis-

tration research for decades (Meier & Bohte, 2003), and

principles of organizational design and span of control

have been the topic of some of the most intense aca-

demic debates in the field (Gulick, 1937; Simon, 1946;

Urwick, 1974). The interest in span of control grew from

the 1950s to the 1970s but has since then witnessed a

decline in popularity (Bohte & Meier, 2001). Perhaps, as a

result, most studies deal with span of control in relation

to management practices such as supervision, control,

and oversight, whereas the more recent topic of leader-

ship has received only limited attention.

Received: 22 November 2021Revised: 20 October 2022Accepted: 21 October 2022

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13566

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the

original work is properly cited.

© 2022 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:775–792. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar 775

A few recent studies address span of control as a con-

textual factor for leadership in public organizations and

argues that broader spans of control undermine the

importance of leadership in relation to employee turnover

(Moon & Park, 2019). However, other studies have argued

that the implications of span of control are most likely

not linear, and there is generally a lack of knowledge

about the relationship between the span of control and

leadership behavior. With this study, we contribute to the

understanding of span of control in three ways.

First, we bring span of control back from its dormant

stage in public administration research (Bohte &

Meier, 2001; Zoller & Muldoon, 2020) and relate it with

concepts, theories, and empirical insights about leader-

ship. The few existing studies about span of control and

leadership rest on classical expectations about the nega-

tive implications of broader spans of control (Moon &

Park 2019), but theory demonstrates how the effects of

span of control can be more complex (Meier &

Bohte, 2003). We develop these theoretical arguments

further and explain why span of control is expected to

have non-linear implications for leadership.

Second, we theoretically discuss how span of control

is linked to different forms of leadership behavior and,

ultimately, employee job satisfaction. Leadership in public

organizations is acknowledged as a multi-faceted phe-

nomenon (Van Wart 2013). Some types of leadership

behavior, such as transformational and transactional lead-

ership are leader-centric (Jensen et al. 2019), but increas-

ing attention is devoted to the understanding of

leadership exerted by other members of an organization

as it is seen in the literature on distributed leadership

(Kjeldsen & Andersen, 2021). Span of control may have

different implications for different types of leadership

behavior, which implies that the impact on employee and

organizational outcomes is not necessarily unitary.

Third, by demonstrating the links empirically within a

specific profession (nurses) and organizational context

(hospitals in Denmark), we show a way forward for span

of control research in public organizations that have prac-

tical implications for organizational design. We provide an

empirical study that builds on a dataset of 393 Danish

nursing managers and 1699 nurses. Based on survey data

from nursing managers and nurses, we empirically inves-

tigate how span of control is associated with transforma-

tional leadership, transactional leadership (verbal

rewards), and distributed leadership, and whether leader-

ship acts as a mediator of span of control in relation to

job satisfaction.

SPAN OF CONTROL AND (PUBLIC)

MANAGEMENT

Span of control is a central feature of organizational struc-

ture and design. Although authority in organizations is a

complex affair, the hierarchical structure of most public

organizations assigns formal authority to managers over

specific employees. The number of employees a manager

has formal authority over is typically understood as the

span of control (Meier & Bohte, 2003). In a hierarchical

organization, span of control is an inevitable feature

because decisions about organizational structure have

implications for the number of employees per manager

(Simon, 1946). For a simple example, ensuring narrow

spans of control requires many organizational units,

whereas an organizational division in fewer units entails

broader spans of control.

Extending from the scientific management school,

early administration scholars addressed the question

about the effectiveness of span of control. They adhered

to the idea that the organizational design and operation

should be guided by administrative and management

principles (Meier & Bohte, 2000; Zoller & Muldoon, 2020).

For example, Gulick argued that a wider span of control

diminishes the time a manager can interact, inspect, and

supervise each employee and that “[j]ust as the hand of

man can span only a limited number of notes on the

piano, so the mind and will of man can span but a limited

number of immediate managerial contacts”(Gulick, 1937:

87). Thus, the relationship between managers and

employees was argued to be structured by span of con-

trol. Based on related arguments, early organization theo-

rists recommended that span of control was kept low;

often in the range between three to six employees, and

always below 15 (van Fleet & Bedeian, 1977).

Later scholars argued that this straightforward

approach to span of control is probably too simple. From a

behavioral perspective, Herbert Simon (1946) directed

attention to the many trade-offs involved in organizational

design. One main point focused on selective attention and

bounded rationality, and the need for balancing rivaling

and sometimes evenconflicting principles, values and

goals rather than adhering to singular optimizing. Adminis-

tration scholars have later noted that Gulick was not as

one-eyed as implied by Simon (Meier & Bohte, 2000), and

that he actually suggested that the optimal span of control

is most likely contingent on organizational factors such as

task diversity, geography, and time. Furthermore, in agree-

ment with Simon, he alsoargued for more scientific studies

on the subject (Gulick, 1937).

Extending from this debate, Meier and Bohte (2000)

proposed a theory of the span of control that demon-

strates how the effectiveness of span of control can take

a curvilinear form such that narrow and wide spans of

control are less optimal than medium-sized spans of con-

trol. The logic is that reducing a given span of control is

associated with costs from replacing directly productive

workers with indirectly productive managers, whereas

increasing a given span of control can weaken the man-

agers’possibilities for effective direction, supervision, and

coordination.

Empirical studies have found mixed support for the

implications of span of control. Some studies find nega-

tive implications of larger spans of control in relation to

776 NOT TOO NARROW, NOT TOO BROAD