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This article presents findings from a survey of law enforcement administrators that analyzed the "span of control" (the number of people with whom a supervisor is responsible for communicating) in their departments.
Police management studies from the 1950s through the 1980s featured the span of control concept. However, as policing started to move organizationally from a tall hierarchy to a more flattened organizational, the span of control concept began to fade from the literature.
Official ratios of officers to sergeant (sometimes called the “span of control”) generally range from 4:1 to 15:1, with an average of approximately seven officers to each sergeant. See, e.g., PERF, Supervision , supra, at 19.
Span of control can be defined as the number of subordinates directly reporting to a leader/manager. MPD also defines span of control as the number of organizational elements that may be directly managed by one (1) person.
A typical span of control in police organizations is between 5 to 10 subordinates per supervisor, depending on the complexity of tasks. As organizations grow, they often reassess their span of control to ensure efficient management and communication flow.
Wilson's popular textbook on police administration reinforced classic managerial principles: span-of-control (having a limited number of subordinates per supervisor or manager), an unambiguous hierarchy (so everybody knows to whom they must report), and centralization of command (in which decisions are made at the top and flow down).
Span of Control for Law Enforcement Agencies. Author: Troy Lane. Summary: The responses from the administrators indicate that many agencies prefer lower spans of control (lower number of officers per supervisor), which necessarily leads to multiple layers of management. This contrasts with the trend in business management and some governments ...
