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Line and Staff Authority Meaning
Line and staff authority serves as the foundation of well-structured and effective organizations. This framework, by establishing clear roles, responsibilities, and areas of expertise, facilitates efficient decision making, encourages collaboration, and contributes to organizational success.
Line and staff are the most widely-used concepts in organising, and most of the structures have line-staff structures. Large and complex organisations operating in increasingly dynamic environments need a variety of special abilities, knowledge, and skills to support the effective and efficient performance of their major functions of production and marketing.
They, therefore, employ a variety of experts including industrial experts, quality control managers, industrial relation directors, legal advisors, cost accountants, market researchers, research and development scientists, and so forth. These specialists perform the staff functions of rendering expert advice and service to fine managers is the performance of their functions.
The connection between line and staff managers is important for an organization to work efficiently. Their daily interactions involve giving advice, guidance, and providing services, which helps create a harmonious workplace where each manager’s skills are fully utilized. When organizations understand the importance of this relationship, they can promote a culture of collaboration and achieve their goals more efficiently.
Interdependence of Line and Staff Managers in Achieving Organizational Goals
The line managers are dependent on staff specialists to achieve their goals. A production manager cannot function effectively, if, e.g., the materials manager does not provide him supplies, tools, spare parts, raw materials, etc., the maintenance manager does not provide him repairing and maintenance services, quality control managers do not cooperate with him by guiding quality specifications, and so forth.
Similarly, staff managers can become unnecessary if line personnel don’t need or accept their guidance and help. Staff managers need to demonstrate their value by ensuring that line personnel appreciate and embrace their advice and services. If they can’t do that, their role may become unnecessary and they could be at risk of losing their jobs.
As shown in the image, specified staff positions in an organisation include:
i) Executive Assistant to the Managing Director
ii) Legal Advisor to the organisation
iii) Quality Control Manager
iv) Personnel Officer
Importance of Line and Staff Authority
Line and staff authority is significant because of the following advantages:
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- Expert Advice
- Benefit of Specialisation
- Relief to Line of Executives
- Benefits of Research and Development
- Training
- Unity of Action
- Better Coordination
- Balanced Decisions
1) Expert Advice
The line and staff organisation facilitates expert advice to the line executive at the time of need. Staff specialists play an important role in our organization. They handle thorough planning and investigations on various matters, which allows our line officers to concentrate on executing plans. This division of labour ensures the organization runs efficiently and effectively. By entrusting planning and investigative tasks to our skilled staff specialists, line officers can focus on implementing strategies and achieving their goals. This streamlined approach boosts productivity and ensures a smooth workflow throughout the entire process.
2) Benefit of Specialisation
Line and staff through the division of the whole concept into two types of authority divide the enterprise into parts and functional areas. To improve efficiency and effectiveness, every officer or official must concentrate solely on their assigned area of responsibility.
3) Relief to Line of Executives
In a line and staff organisation, advice and counselling which is provided to the line executives divides the work between the two. The line executive can concentrate entirely on plan execution, avoiding the need to divide their attention across multiple areas. This leads to a more efficient and effective approach to their responsibilities.
4) Benefits of Research and Development
Through the advice of specialised staff, the line executives, the line executives get time to execute plans by making productive decisions which are helpful for a concern. Having staff specialists enables line executives to delve into innovative ideas and engage in research within their respective areas. This opens up the possibility of developing fresh approaches and strategies. By tapping into the expertise of staff specialists, line executives can adeptly address complex challenges and promote organizational growth.
5) Training
Having staff specialists and their expert advice forms a strong basis for training line officials. This enables line executives to concentrate fully on their decision-making process, making it an invaluable training ground to enhance their skills and expertise.
6) Unity of Action
Unity of action naturally results from unified control. Effective control relies on coordination within the organization. In the line and staff authority structure, all officials have the freedom to make decisions, promoting effective control across the entire enterprise.
7) Better Coordination
Line and staff organisation through specialisation can provide better decision making and concentration remains in a few hands. This feature helps in bringing coordination in work as every official is concentrating in their area.
8) Balanced Decisions
Specialization, achieved through line and staff roles, plays a key role in promoting coordination. This relationship automatically ends up with the line official making better and balanced decisions.
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Causes of Conflict between Line and Staff Authority
The points that cause conflict between line and staff managers are as follows:
1) Staff Anxiety about Win Recognition
Staff managers tend to be conscious of their expertise and keen to prove their ability to win recognition of their worth. The situation is complicated by the fact that, unlike production and sales, the contribution of staff to organisational effectiveness is qualitative and does not lend itself to quantitative measurement. Further, their keenness to move up the hierarchical ladder faster than line managers adds to their keenness to prove themselves.
2) Vague Definition of Duties and Authority
Much of the conflict between line and staff occurs due to vagueness in the concept of staff online managers. Staff managers often do not fully realise that even though they have been delegated authority in certain specified areas, their major about to line managers is that of providing them support in the effective performance of their functions. On the other hand, line managers tend to regard staff advice as interference leading to the dilution of their authority. Both line and staff should realise that they are in a mutually dependent relationship and they should both coordinate their activities for optimising the enterprise’s effectiveness.
3) Notable Ambition and Individualistic Behavior in Staff Managers
Dalton found that in the three firms he studied the staff managers were markedly “ambitious, restless and individualistic”. They showed much concern about winning recognition for their special abilities and displayed a lot of eagerness to create a favourable impression about themselves. These tendencies hampered their sensitivity to their role as a source of support and help to line managers and caused conflicts.
4) Staff’s Reliance on Line for Appointments
Staff officers, as ambitious as they happen to be, are conscious of their dependence on line managers for their upward mobility. In their anxiety to win their superior’s recognition of their ability to cooperate with line managers, they make compromises with line demands. They resort to expediency and even silently watch the line breaking the rules. This creates some conflict among staff colleagues who bring charges of “selling out” against each other.
5) Disregard by Top Management
Staff position tends to be weakened unless it is provided full support by top management. It should be realised that unless top management uses staff for advice and service, it will be difficult to gain the acceptance of line managers at departmental and sectional levels. Top management should also insist that line managers should consult the staff manager concerned on problems which involve issues relating to that particular area of speciality.
6) Scarcity of Effective Staff Managers
Often line-staff conflict is caused by the non-availability of staff managers who possess technical expertise as well as human relations skills. Appointments to staff positions are generally based on the criterion of possession of a particular expertise. What is often ignored is whether the person to be appointed possesses adequate human relations skills, a manager in a staff position needs these skills as much as he needs expertise, as his effectiveness in utilising his expertise significantly depends on his ability to use influence and persuasion for gaining the acceptance of his expertise by line managers.
7) Mixing Staff and Operating Duties
Staff managers have various kinds of operating responsibilities like prescribing systems and procedures, overseeing the uniform implementation of policies and procedures, etc. These responsibilities are associated with functional and control authority. The exercise of these kinds of authority is inconsistent with the advisory role of the staff.
Difference between line and staff authority
The key difference between line and staff authority is that line authority reflects superior-subordinate relationships characterized by the power of decision-making. In contrast, staff authority refers to the right to advise on improving the effectiveness of line employees in performing their duties. Authority is related to decision–making power, which is a crucial aspect of any organization. Line and staff authority conform to two types of employees: line staff and staff personnel. The roles of line staff and staff personnel differ; therefore, the authority levels also vary.