US Department Veterans Affairs Organizational Structure

By Brett F. Berner
MAN3240 Applied Organizational Behavior
Saint Petersburg College
June 16, 2013

As you can see from the Veterans Administration Organizational Chart above, it is a wide span of control so they can be more efficient in the organization. By maintaining a wide span of control this will greatly reduce cost which will be a benefit for the tax payers. The org. chart shows how the Secretary of Veteran Affairs has at least four advocates: the Chief of Staff, Veterans Benefits Administration, Veterans Health Administration, and the National Cemetery Administration. By the VA Secretary having these advocates, they will be able to maintain close control of their offices. The drawback from this could increase expenses because of added management, making vertical communication in the organization more complex, which could isolate Mr. Secretary, and finally encourage overly tight supervision and discourage employee autonomy (Robbins & Judge, 2012). Today’s trend in recent years has been a wider span of control, and Veterans Affairs (VA) is no exception. The VA employs of 307,222 people. This number is expected to grow since there are two wars in progress with no end forecasted (VA EEO Report, 2010). The advocates of the VA are large companies within themselves; for example, the Assistant Inspector General Management and Administration include departments such as: Operations, Information Technology and Data Analysis, Administrative and Financial Operations, Hotline, and Budget (Moore, 2010). With today’s increase in our Nation’s deficit, we can see how an increase in a wider span of control is needed in the VA. This will reduce costs, cut overhead, speed decision making, increase flexibility, get closer to our veterans, and just maybe do something like empower a state employee. This will require training existing employees to do more, and hire more qualified employees with higher education and better skills (Robbins & Judge, 2012).

The idea of a wider span of control is not foreign to the federal government. This author has experience in both the Air Force, who utilizes specialized training with tight control, and with the US Coast Guard, who employs a wider span of control approach. US Air Force specialize their team to become as efficient as possible, especially when it came to aircraft inspections. The Air Force propeller mechanics could change out C-130 props faster than anyone else, while their C-130 engine mechanics can inspect and troubleshoot better than anyone else in the world, but that is all they do. The main reason the Air Force has used this approach is to make everything standard, and to maintain their large aircraft inventory efficiently. The Coast Guard does not have as large an inventory of aircraft as the Air Force, so the Coast Guard was more generalized with their training of aircrew. The Coast Guard made an incentive of all mechanics to do a perfect job by training them to become aircrew members; no one wants to fly in a plane that someone only did an okay job. A Coast Guard C-130 flight engineer could be trained and perform the duties of a loadmaster, dropmaster,