In the 1980s corporate leaders flattened many organizational structures causing average spans to move closer to 1-to-10.
The current shift to self-directed cross-functional teams and other forms of non-hierarchical structures, have made the concept of span of control less important.
This is because the optimum span of control depends on numerous variables including organizational structure, available technology, the functions being performed, and the competencies of the manager as well as staff.
Graicunas showed with these formulas that each additional subordinate increases the number of potential interactions significantly.
It appears natural that no organization can afford to maintain a control structure of a dimension being required for implementing a scalar chain under the unity of command condition.
Consequently, for a long time, finding the optimum span of control has been a major challenge to organization design.
As Mackenzie (1978, p 121) describes it: ”One could argue that with larger spans, the costs of supervision would tend to be reduced, because a smaller percentage of the members of the organization are supervisors.
In order to put this system to work, Taylor’s functional foremanship has to be abandoned, and unity of command needs to be established.
This solution would be equivalent to the application of Fayol's Bridge combined with the principle of employee initiative that he proposed.
According to this assumption, they considered the opportunity of having access to a supervising manager would be sufficient to satisfy the need for control in standard situations.