This document describes common patterns found in organizational structures that can indicate potential issues with transparency, efficiency, or corruption risks.
Description: Information flows through a middle manager without direct access to higher authority. The intermediary can distort or filter information.
Pattern:
A → B → C
Description: A single person has too many direct reports, reducing the ability to manage effectively.
Pattern:
X1 → Manager
X2 → Manager
...
X8 → Manager
Description: One employee reports to multiple managers who are not aligned in a clear hierarchy. This leads to task conflicts, overlapping expectations, and a lack of unified responsibility for decision-making.
Pattern:
A → B
A → C
A → D
Description: An individual is not connected to the organizational graph, leading to exclusion from communication and control.
Pattern:
(no edges)
Description: Someone reports directly to a much higher level, skipping layers of management and reducing structure clarity.
Pattern:
A → D (where B and C are skipped)
Description: A closed loop of responsibilities, which can obscure accountability.
Pattern:
A → B → C → A
Description: A single node controls access to other parts of the organization, creating a bottleneck or potential abuse point.
Pattern:
A → Gatekeeper → B
Description: Managers have vastly different numbers of subordinates, indicating unbalanced distribution of responsibility.
Pattern:
X1-X4 → M1
Y1 → M2
Description: All inputs come from a similar group or role, creating a lack of diversity in feedback.
Pattern:
E1 → M
E2 → M
E3 → M
E4 → M
Description: A node that appears in the graph but has no meaningful function or connection in actual operations.
Pattern:
A → Phantom
B → Phantom
C → Phantom