-DTXHV¶(1976) elaborated this work and developed the stratified systems theory (SST) (Jacobs &
Jaques, 1987). The SST highlights the external demands placed on leaders and provided a clear
delineation of leadership work and role requirements across organizational levels (Gardner &
Schermerhorn Jr, 1992; Zaccaro & Klimoski, 2001). SST states that top-level jobs include setting
strategic direction in a long-term context and the coordination of several discrete business units,
linking the internal and external environments. Alternatively, lower-level jobs take place within a
single business unit and a single functional domain, according to Jaques (1976), and are focused on
the local internal environment with activities in the short term. SST adopted seven specific levels to
characterize differences in complexity across organizational levels. In turn, these seven narrowly
defined levels can be grouped into three higher-RUGHU OHYHOV ³systems ́ ³organizational ́ DQG
³production ́ 7KHVH GLVWLQFWLRQV FRUUHVSRQG FORVHO\ WR WKRVH PDGH E\ .DW]DQG .DKQ(1978) (i.e.
³RULJLQDWLRQRIVWUXFWXUH ́³LQWHUSRODWLRQRIVWUXcWXUH ́DQG³DGPLQLVWUDWLRQRIVWUXFWXUH ́UHVSHFWLYHO\
Despite the variety in terms of organizational levels, ranging from three to seven, cumulative
empirical evidence supports only three general domains where the nature of work within each level is
highly similar but qualitatively distinct between organizational levels (Zaccaro, 2001). Hunt and
Ropo (1995) also pointed out that for a specific organization, it may be practical to include more than
three levels, but for cross-organizational comparisons, three organizational levels are considered
sufficient.
3.2.2 TIME HORIZON
Most theories of organizational level differences involve the concept of complexity. The underlying
argument is that job complexity increases with organizational level and managerial success depends
on cognitive complexity, based on the notion of requisite variety (Ashby, 1952). Jaques (1994)
introduced the notion of μtime span of discretion¶ZKLFKLPSOLHVZLWKPRUHFRPSOH[MREVWKHUHLVD
larger time lapse between action and feedback on the consequences of that action. Thus, the primary
way to distinguish organizational levels in SST is by the time frame in which managers must consider
the feedback on their activities. $FFRUGLQJWR-DTXHV¶WKHRU\the time span for lower-level managers
is in the order of days or weeks. Top-level managers, however, may experience a time lapse of years
before they receive feedback on their actions. Although there is some disagreement on how
adequately time span of discretion represents complexity, empirical studies have identified differences
in time span of discretion for the three general organizational levels (Hunt, 1991; Zaccaro, 2001),