Week 10 — Three Vans, One Owner: Organizing and Controlling a Bike-Repair Business — Traditional alternative (no AI)
Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.
Assignment 9 of the term — count the people a growing business organizes, check a day's work against a standard, and explain controlling to someone new to business.
This week you learned how a growing business is led: the four functions of management, the types of planning with a mission statement and objectives, organizing people with an organization chart's levels and spans of control, the three leadership styles, the difference between managing and leading, controlling with a standard, and the managerial skills by level. In this assignment you organize one small bike-repair business, check one day of its work against a standard, and explain controlling to someone who has never studied business. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Business Case Workshop practise the same ideas from other angles.
The task
The case is illustrative, built for this course and not real data. A mobile bike-repair business fixes bicycles at riders' homes and workplaces from vans, and it has grown from one van to three. Like the coffee cart in this week's chapter, the case has no named people.
The business's figures, line by line:
- Owner: 1, who leads the whole business.
- Van leads: 3, each reporting directly to the owner.
- Mechanics: 2 under each van lead.
- Break-even: 9,600 repairs a year.
- Operating days: 240 a year.
- Repairs completed across all three vans on one day: 34.
Work these two problems, showing every step of the arithmetic:
- What is the business's headcount, in people?
- How many repairs short of the break-even pace is the day with 34 repairs?
Beside each answer, add a brief interpretation:
- Problem 1: name the owner's span of control and each van lead's span of control, and say why neither one is the headcount; then name the leadership style you would have the owner use with the van leads on one specific decision and say why it fits the situation; then name the managerial skill that matters most for a van lead, a first-line manager, and the one that matters most for the owner, a top manager.
- Problem 2: walk the day through the four steps of controlling (set a standard, measure, compare, correct) and say what the owner should do first, and why that is not micromanaging; then write a one-sentence mission statement for the business and one objective someone could check a year from now, and name the type of planning behind the decision to grow from one van to three.
Explain it to a non-expert
A friend who has started as a shift supervisor at a café asks you, "My manager says part of my job is controlling the team. Does that mean I have to watch everyone every minute?" Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains what controlling is, answers the question in everyday words, and names one limit, including that the bike-repair case is illustrative and that one day's count is not a trend. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.
For a different, ungraded example, imagine a volunteer at a community garden who is asked to coordinate the weekend watering crew. Model answer: "Coordinating means you plan who waters which beds, set up the schedule, keep the crew motivated, and check that the beds actually got watered. Checking is not hovering over people with a hose; it is looking at a simple target, such as every bed watered by noon, and seeing whether it happened. If a bed got missed, you ask why before you change anything, because a broken hose and a forgotten shift need different fixes. A made-up garden like this one cannot tell you which cause is more common in your own crew."
Use that pattern for your friend at the café, with your own wording and evidence.
Show your work. A reader should be able to rebuild every amount you report from the business's chart, its break-even, its operating days, and the day's count without guessing which numbers you used.
Deliverables
Submit a single report containing:
- the two answers, each with every step of the arithmetic shown and the interpretation the task names for that problem;
- your message to the friend, explaining controlling, answering whether it means watching everyone every minute, and naming one limit; and
- a short list of the business's figures, giving the number of mechanics, the headcount, the owner's and each van lead's span of control, the break-even pace, and the day's shortfall, so your amounts can be checked.
Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.
Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled sketch of the business's organization chart and its daily count with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.
How you'll be graded
The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.
Academic integrity and AI use
This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the arithmetic, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. You may use a free spreadsheet to lay out the business's figures. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.
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