Administrative Ratios and Organization Size: A Longitudinal Examination

Data were obtained on the administrative components of 41 urban school systems in western Canada for a five-year period: 1964-65 through 1968-69. Cross-sectional analysis, using multiple definitions of administrative ratio, showed that larger system size tended to be associated with a smaller administrative ratio. The only exception was provided by the ratios based on the number of professional staff, such as psychologists, social workers and consultants, which showed increases with system size increases. However, the 41 graphs of changes in administrative ratio in each system showed no consistent tendency to rise or fall over the five-year period. Longitudinal analysis of individual systems therefore did not seem to support the general cross-sectional inference of this and other studies. The findings tend to confirm the suspicions of some writers that crosssectional analysis performed at one time can lead to faulty inferences concerning growth patterns of organizations.