Flow of Communications, Expert Qualifications and Organizational Authority Structures

This paper is concerned with some of the general issues of the relationship between comparative research and the case study and where one can complement the other, showing specifically how this applies to recent research dealing with the expert qualifications of operating personnel, the ratio of managers to operating personnel, and the flow of hierarchical communications in formal organizations. Inferences about the flow of communications within organizations in which superiors have narrow spans of control and supervise subordinates who are highly qualified are drawn from comparative research on the formal structures of organizations and tested with observational data from case studies on the interaction of superiors and subordinates. The findings from two of these case studies are generally consistent with the argument that narrow spans of control serve to facilitate upward communication where experts are employed as subordinates. However, the analysis of a third deviant case suggests that the degree and type of differentiation of hierarchical work roles importantly affect both the needs and opportunities for communication and through them the relationship between hierarchy and expertness.