IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v28y1982i10p1159-1165.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Production Function for Organizations Doing Case Work

Author

Listed:
  • Martin J. Beckmann

    (Brown University)

Abstract

This paper examines the contribution of supervisors to an organization's output by constructing a production function in which supervisors' time and case workers' time enter as inputs. There is a quality variable associated with output: average delay. The functional form of the production function is derived for the simplest possible type of queuing model, but the method can be applied to other specifications of the queuing process and of the quality variable. Such a production function can be used to determine the most cost effective span of control. The model is extended to obtain a multi-factor production function for multi-level organizations. Numbers from a welfare agency are used as illustrations but no empirical validation is attempted.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin J. Beckmann, 1982. "A Production Function for Organizations Doing Case Work," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(10), pages 1159-1165, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:28:y:1982:i:10:p:1159-1165
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.28.10.1159
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.28.10.1159
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.28.10.1159?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John W. Boudreau, 2004. "50th Anniversary Article: Organizational Behavior, Strategy, Performance, and Design in Management Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(11), pages 1463-1476, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    organization design; production functions;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:28:y:1982:i:10:p:1159-1165. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.