| Course | BU 106 Introduction to Business |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 3 |
| Paper type | Management and organization paper |
| Length | About 960 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Business Management |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 106 Unit 3
130,301 Employees, 11 Regions, One General Manager per Restaurant: Reading Chipotle's Organization Chart and the Four Functions of Management
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 106: Introduction to Business
Instructor Name
January 29, 2026
130,301 Employees, 11 Regions, One General Manager per Restaurant: Reading Chipotle's Organization Chart and the Four Functions of Management
The Company and Its Size
Chipotle Mexican Grill is a fast-casual restaurant chain. According to its annual report for 2025, it employed 130,301 people at the end of the year: 125,408 in its U.S. restaurants, 1,708 in its restaurant support centers and field leadership, and 3,185 outside the United States (Chipotle Mexican Grill, 2026). It owned and operated 3,938 restaurants in the United States and 104 abroad, with a further 14 international restaurants run by partners. Unlike most large restaurant chains, Chipotle owns and operates all of its restaurants in the United States and Canada rather than franchising them. That choice shapes the whole structure: every U.S. restaurant manager is a Chipotle employee, reporting through Chipotle's own chain of command.
The Organization Chart
Drawn from the roles the annual report names, the chart runs from the chief executive officer at the top to the crew in each restaurant.
Top level: chief executive officer, with senior officers who lead the company's main functions, such as finance, operations, marketing and technology, supported by the restaurant support centers.
Operations line, in descending order: Regional Vice Presidents, one for each of 11 U.S. regions; Team Directors; Field Leaders, each responsible for a group of restaurants; General Managers, one per restaurant; the restaurant's managers and crew.
| Level | Role | Responsible for | Number, where the report states it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chief executive officer and senior officers | Whole company; each officer a function | Not stated in the annual report; listed in the proxy statement |
| 2 | Regional Vice President | One of 11 U.S. regions | 11 |
| 3 | Team Director | A group of field leaders within a region | Not stated |
| 4 | Field Leader | A group of restaurants | Not stated |
| 5 | General Manager | One restaurant | About 3,938 in the U.S. |
| 6 | Restaurant managers and crew | Shifts and stations in one restaurant | 125,408 U.S. restaurant employees in total |
Reading the Chart: How the Firm Is Grouped
Chipotle uses a mixture of groupings. At the top, the senior officers divide the company by function: finance, operations, marketing, technology, supply chain and people. Below the operations officer, the field organization is grouped by geography: regions, then smaller areas under team directors, then groups of restaurants under field leaders. That mixture is common for a chain that sells one format in many places. The product is the same everywhere, so there is no reason to divide the company by product line; the work of running restaurants, however, happens in thousands of locations, so it is organized by place.
The chart is also tall in the field organization. Between a crew member and the chief executive there are at least six levels. That height is the price of a very large number of units, and the chain compensates by keeping each restaurant's own structure simple and by promoting from within: the annual report says that internal advancement into field leadership positions was above 82% (Chipotle Mexican Grill, 2026).
Span of Control
The report does not state how many restaurants each field leader or team director supervises, so spans below the regional level cannot be read from published material. What can be calculated is the span at the top of the field organization and inside each restaurant. With 3,938 U.S. restaurants and 11 regional vice presidents, each regional vice president is responsible for about 358 restaurants, which is only possible because two further layers sit between them and the restaurants. Inside a restaurant, the average is about 32 employees (125,408 รท 3,938), led by one general manager with a small team of shift managers. Spans in large organizations involve trade-offs, since a span that works well for one goal, such as cost control, may work less well for another, such as close coaching; research on public organizations found exactly that kind of conflict between goals (Theobald & Nicholson-Crotty, 2005).
The Four Functions of Management, Attached to the General Manager
The course text describes management as planning, organizing, leading and controlling (Gitman et al., 2018). The clearest place to see all four at Chipotle is the restaurant general manager.
Planning: forecasting the week's sales by day and hour, and building a staffing schedule to match, including extra staff for lunch and the evening digital-order peak.
Organizing: assigning crew to stations on the line, the grill, the digital make-line and cash, and deciding who trains whom.
Leading: hiring, training and developing crew, and identifying future managers, which matters in a company that fills most field leadership roles from within.
Controlling: tracking food costs, labor hours against sales, food safety checks and the speed of the line, and correcting when any drift from target.
The Structure in Action: A Regional Change
The California wage law discussed earlier in the course shows how the structure handles a change that affects only part of the company. A menu price change for California restaurants is a decision made at the top, by finance and operations leaders, because it affects the company's results. But its effects are managed through the geographic line: the regional vice presidents responsible for California restaurants, their team directors and field leaders, and finally each general manager, who must explain new prices to regular customers and adjust staffing now that each labor hour costs more. A structure grouped only by function would have no natural owner for a problem that exists in one state. The geographic line gives Chipotle one: the leaders of the regions that include California. The same logic applies to local supply problems, weather closures and state health rules, which is part of why geographic grouping suits a chain operating across every U.S. region.
What the Structure Suggests
Chipotle's structure concentrates day-to-day responsibility in the general manager and relies on a long chain of field leaders above them to hold thousands of restaurants to the same standard. It works because the format is standard and the company owns every U.S. location, so it can set and enforce one way of working. The trade-off is distance: a policy set by the chief executive passes through at least four managers before it reaches the person making a burrito. The strength of the structure therefore depends on the middle layers, the field leaders and team directors, whose numbers the company does not publish.
References
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (2026). Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1058090/000105809026000009/cmg-20251231.htm
Gitman, L. J., McDaniel, C., Shah, A., Reece, M., Koffel, L., Talsma, B., & Hyatt, J. C. (2018). Introduction to business. OpenStax. https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-business
Theobald, N. A., & Nicholson-Crotty, S. (2005). The many faces of span of control: Organizational structure across multiple goals. Administration & Society, 36(6), 648-660. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399704270585
BU 106 Unit 3 instructions, in plain terms
Unit 3 asks you to analyze how a real company is organized and managed. Expect to describe the company and its size, draw its organization chart, explain how it groups work, discuss span of control, apply the four functions of management to a specific role, show the structure in action and draw conclusions. Students often ask where to find structure information. Annual reports name senior officers, regions and roles, which is enough to build a chart. Say where published information stops. Pick one role, such as a store manager, to show planning, organizing, leading and controlling concretely. Use a real change to show how decisions move through the structure.
How this BU 106 Unit 3 example is built
The paper opens with employee counts by area from the annual report. The chart section describes each level from the top officer to the crew. The grouping section explains functional divisions at the top and geographic regions below the operations officer. The span section calculates restaurants per region and notes that lower spans are not published. The functions section shows the general manager planning schedules, organizing stations, leading the crew and controlling food cost and speed. The action section follows a California menu price decision from headquarters through regions to restaurants. The final section concludes that the structure relies on strong general managers and a long chain of field leaders to keep thousands of restaurants consistent.
Where the points sit in the BU 106 Unit 3 rubric
Herzing's rubric for a management and organization paper usually covers the company, the organization chart, grouping, span of control, the functions of management, an example and conclusions. Applying the four functions to a specific role draws the most points, because it shows the student can see management in daily work rather than as definitions. Company points reward size from a reliable source. Chart criteria look for accurate levels. Grouping credit goes to functional and geographic divisions identified correctly. Span points reward calculations and honest limits. The example should show decisions moving through the structure. Theobald and Nicholson-Crotty on span of control, the course text by Gitman and colleagues and the 2025 annual report support the paper.
BU 106 Unit 3 help: mistakes that cost points
Organization papers in BU 106 Unit 3 frequently go wrong by defining the four functions without attaching them to anyone. Another frequent problem is drawing a chart with levels the company never names. Students often skip span of control or invent figures. Grouping is not identified. Sources are general websites rather than the annual report. No real decision shows the structure working. Conclusions repeat the description. Limits of public information are not stated, so a reader cannot tell which parts of the chart come from the company and which are the writer's guesses. Finally, follow one manager through one day, because graders reward a paper that makes structure and management visible in the work itself.
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BU 106 Unit 3 questions, answered
Where do I find a company's structure?
In material the company publishes. Annual reports name the executive team and often show divisions, investor pages and announcements about reorganizations fill in more, and job postings reveal which titles report where. Build the chart from those and cite each part. Where the published record thins out below the top two levels, say so and describe the rest as a reasonable reading rather than as fact.
How detailed should the chart be?
Deep enough to show grouping and span, which usually means the executive level and one or two below it. A chart naming every department in a large firm becomes unreadable and adds nothing the argument uses. Where the assignment sets a scope, follow it. What a marker looks for is whether the levels shown actually support the claims the paper makes about them.
Does the paper need a recommendation?
Only where the instructions ask for one, and many sections at this level do not. The unit tends to reward accurate description and a clear reading of consequences rather than a redesign. If you are asked to suggest a change, keep it to one, tie it to the cost you identified, and say what the firm would lose by making it.
Where can I find a free BU 106 Unit 3 sample paper?
The full BU 106 Unit 3 management and organization paper is free on this page, Chipotle's structure and the four functions applied to a restaurant general manager. A paper on another company can be written to order.
What are the four functions of management?
Planning, organizing, leading and controlling. This sample shows each one in the work of a Chipotle restaurant general manager.