GB500 Unit 2 Management Concepts Analysis Example

The Report Nobody Owned: A Unit 2 Management Concepts Analysis of a Quarter of Late Work Orders

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Purdue University Global

GB500: Business Perspectives

Unit 2 Management Concepts Analysis

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[Date]

The property management company, its staff and every figure are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

The Controlling Function

In Stephen Robbins and Mary Coulter's account, controlling is the management function that watches whether work is going to plan and steps in when it drifts far enough to matter (Robbins & Coulter, 2021). They divide it into three steps: measuring actual performance, comparing it against a standard and taking action to correct deviations or inadequate standards. Kenneth Merchant and Wim Van der Stede add that control systems fail most often not because standards are missing but because no one is accountable for acting on the comparison (Merchant & Van der Stede, 2017).

The Episode

Brightwater Residential manages 14 apartment communities with about 3,600 units. Its service standard says that 90 percent of routine maintenance work orders, such as a leaking faucet or a broken disposal, are completed within 72 hours. Each community's maintenance supervisor reports to a regional maintenance manager.

In January, Brightwater reorganized its regional teams. The maintenance coordinator, who had produced a weekly work order aging report and called any community below 90 percent, moved to a new purchasing role. The report continued to generate automatically in the work order system, but it went to a shared inbox that no one checked.

Over the next three months, the share of routine work orders finished within 72 hours fell from 91 percent to 74 percent across the portfolio, and to 58 percent at the two largest communities. Resident complaints to the corporate office tripled. In April, a resident's online review describing a two-week wait for a broken refrigerator reached the vice president of operations, who asked for the numbers and discovered the slide.

The cost was real. Brightwater's lease renewal rate at the two largest communities fell from 56 to 48 percent in the spring renewal season, and the regional manager estimated that each lost renewal costs about $3,200 in turnover expense and vacant days.

Applying the Concept

The episode fits Robbins and Coulter's three steps precisely, and it shows which one broke. The standard existed: 90 percent within 72 hours, written into the service policy and known to every supervisor. Measurement continued: the work order system recorded every order and its completion time, and the aging report was generated every week. What stopped was the comparison step. No person looked at the measured performance and compared it with the standard, so no deviation was ever identified, and the third step, corrective action, never had a trigger.

Brightwater kept its standard and kept measuring; it lost the one person whose job was to compare the two, and the control system stopped working without anyone noticing.

This matters because it changes the remedy. A manager who saw only the result might rewrite the standard, buy a new work order system or retrain technicians. None of those would have helped, because the standard and the measurement were fine. Merchant and Van der Stede's point applies: the control system failed at accountability for the comparison (Merchant & Van der Stede, 2017).

Why the Supervisor Did Not Escalate

One maintenance supervisor at the largest community saw her completion times slipping in February, because her technicians were short-staffed after a resignation. She did not tell the regional manager. Asked later why, she said she assumed the coordinator would call as usual, and she worried that raising staffing would make her look unable to cope.

Paul Hersey, Kenneth Blanchard and Dewey Johnson's situational leadership model holds that leaders should match their style to a follower's readiness, giving more direction to people with lower ability or confidence on a task and more delegation to those with high readiness (Hersey et al., 2013). The regional manager treated all fourteen supervisors as highly ready and delegated almost entirely. For routine work, that was right. But this supervisor had been in the role only seven months and had never handled a staffing gap. On that specific task, she needed more support and a clearer expectation that she should raise problems early. The leadership style did not match her readiness on the situation she faced.

Recommendation

Brightwater should name an owner for the weekly comparison: the regional maintenance manager, who should review the aging report every Monday and call any community below 90 percent the same day. The report should go to that manager's own inbox, not a shared one. The regional manager should also hold a monthly check-in with each supervisor in their first year, asking specifically about staffing and backlog. The vice president of operations should review the portfolio figure monthly for the next two quarters to confirm the control is working, then quarterly. If the figure is back above 90 percent for two consecutive months by then, the extra review can stop; if not, the vice president should ask whether the 72-hour standard itself fits the staffing the communities now have.

References

Hersey, P., Blanchard, K. H., & Johnson, D. E. (2013). Management of organizational behavior: Leading human resources (10th ed.). Pearson.

Merchant, K. A., & Van der Stede, W. A. (2017). Management control systems: Performance measurement, evaluation and incentives (4th ed.). Pearson.

Robbins, S. P., & Coulter, M. (2021). Management (15th ed.). Pearson.