Replacing the concept of qu.antity' of communication by rate.

of Zipf was confinned and extended by Cavanaugh in the fifties. Replacing the concept of qu.antity' of communication by rate. of interaction, Cavanaugh extended Zipf's hypothesis to cover human transportation.
All of these factors, demonstrated in such a wide variety of contexts, would seem to be relevant in planning the layout of a factory or busine~s premises and in establishing a chain of command-especially in an overseas operation. As Peter Drucker puts it: 'Every additiona). administrative level makes the attainment of common direction and mutual understanding more difficult. Every additional level distorts objectives and misdirects attention. Every link in the chain sets up additional stresses, and creates one more source of inertia, friction and slack.'
Although many managers would agree with this statement, few companies have gone to the lengths of ffiM when they reduced the number of levels in all of their units in the forties. Their grievance procedure, for example, was speeded up by recognizing only three divisions-man, manager, management. The occasional dispute not settled at the man-manager level went straight to the man-board level for settlement. Other see the effects of the problem as being concentrated at the top of an organisation. The top executives have the greatest amount of decision-making power and hence a greater need for information. There may be a tendency for the message flow to them to get increasingly heavy, while they have proportionally less time available to digest the information.. In these circumstalICeS they may soon come to depend on briefed-down communication usually interpreted by their assistants. Because of their very position, many chief executives may be totally insulated