| Course | BU 302 Leadership and Organizational Behavior |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 1 |
| Paper type | Organizational setting profile |
| Length | About 1,060 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Business Management |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 302 Unit 1
Fourteen Crews Out the Gate by 6:45: An Organizational Setting Profile of a Composite Commercial Landscaping Company in Suburban Atlanta
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 302: Leadership and Organizational Behavior
Instructor Name
January 21, 2026
Fourteen Crews Out the Gate by 6:45: An Organizational Setting Profile of a Composite Commercial Landscaping Company in Suburban Atlanta
Purpose of This Profile
This profile describes the organization that the rest of this course's assignments will analyze. Greenline Grounds is a composite commercial landscaping company built for this course from the ordinary features of firms in its industry. The profile states what the company does, how it is arranged, who reports to whom and where decisions stop, and which behaviors a manager there would actually notice on an ordinary day. It is written as an internal briefing rather than an essay so that later units can return to specific details, such as a crew lead's morning routine or the way rain days are handled, without describing the company again. Robbins and Judge (2019) define organizational behavior as the study of what people do in an organization and how that behavior affects performance, and the profile therefore concentrates on what people do.
What the Company Does
Greenline Grounds maintains and installs landscaping for about 210 commercial properties in the northern suburbs of Atlanta: office parks, apartment communities, retail centers, two private schools and several homeowners associations. About 80 percent of revenue comes from annual maintenance contracts that pay a fixed monthly fee for mowing, edging, pruning, seasonal color, mulch and leaf removal. The remaining 20 percent comes from installation projects, such as replacing a property's shrub beds or installing irrigation, which are bid one at a time.
The company employs about 96 people at the peak of the season, from March through November, and about 55 through the winter. The difference is made up of seasonal crew members, many of whom return each year. That pattern is common in the occupation: the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that some grounds maintenance jobs are seasonal, that workers are busiest in spring, summer and fall, and that landscaping and groundskeeping workers earned a median of $18.82 an hour in May 2025 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026). The work is outdoors, physical and weather dependent, and Atlanta summers regularly bring afternoon heat indexes above 100 degrees.
How It Is Arranged
The owner, who founded the company 19 years ago, sets prices for large contracts and approves any purchase over $5,000. Two operations managers report to the owner: one runs the maintenance division, with 12 crews, and the other runs the installation division, with two larger crews and an irrigation technician. Each crew has a crew lead and two to four crew members, and crew leads report to their division's operations manager. Five account managers also report to the owner. Account managers sell contracts, walk properties with clients and pass requests to operations. A fleet and equipment manager, reporting to the maintenance operations manager, keeps the 19 trucks, trailers and mowers running, and an office team of three handles scheduling software, billing and payroll.
Decisions stop at predictable points. A crew lead decides the order of tasks on a property and can send a crew member home for a safety problem. An operations manager decides which crew goes where each day and approves overtime. An account manager can promise a client small extras, such as an additional mulch refresh, but not change a contract's price. Anything that changes a contract or spends more than $5,000 goes to the owner. Using the vocabulary Mintzberg (1979) offers, the company is decentralized for daily operating decisions and centralized for pricing and money, a common arrangement in small firms led by their founders.
Behaviors a Manager Would Notice
Work is assigned at 6:15 a.m. in the equipment yard. The maintenance operations manager reads each crew's property list aloud from a printed board, crew leads load their trailers and most crews are through the gate by 6:45 a.m. Crew leads carry a tablet with the scheduling app, where they mark each property complete and upload photos. Visitors to the yard would see crew leads checking their trailers in different ways: some walk a full circle checking straps and fuel, and others load and leave.
When a crew runs short, because someone called in sick or quit, the operations manager moves a member from another crew or assigns a smaller property list, and the change is announced on the group radio channel. When rain arrives, crews wait in their trucks for up to 90 minutes, and if the rain continues the operations manager decides whether to send crews home or to the yard for equipment maintenance. Crew members are paid hourly, so rain days reduce pay, and a visitor would notice how closely crew members watch the weather radar on their phones.
Two meetings exist. A 20-minute Monday safety huddle in the yard, led by the maintenance operations manager, covers one topic each week, and crew leads speak more than crew members. A Thursday afternoon meeting between account managers and operations managers reviews client requests for the following week; crew leads do not attend. A large whiteboard in the break room lists each crew's properties completed per day for the week, and crew members stop to look at it on their way to the time clock. Since last season, crew leads also receive a monthly bonus tied to properties completed per day.
The Part of the Company This Course Returns To
Later units focus on the maintenance division: its 12 crew leads, their crews and the two managers who connect them to the rest of the company. The maintenance division is where most employees work, where most client contact happens and where the tension between speed and quality is most visible. Client callbacks, requests to redo a job, rose in the maintenance division during the second half of last season, and several later units examine why.
What Is Invented and Why
Greenline Grounds does not exist. Its size, structure and routines were chosen to be typical of commercial landscaping firms serving suburban properties, so that the behaviors described are realistic without describing any real employer or employee. Numbers such as the count of properties, crews and trucks, the bonus structure and the rise in callbacks are invented for the course. They were chosen to create situations that the course's theories can explain, such as a pay incentive that may reward the wrong behavior. No detail in this profile comes from a real company's records, and no person described is a real individual.
References
Mintzberg, H. (1979). The structuring of organizations: A synthesis of the research. Prentice-Hall.
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2019). Organizational behavior (18th ed.). Pearson.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026). Occupational outlook handbook: Grounds maintenance workers. U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/building-and-grounds-cleaning/grounds-maintenance-workers.htm
The Herzing BU 302 Unit 1 instructions
For the first unit of BU 302, students describe one organization in enough detail to analyze it for the rest of the course. Most versions want what the organization does, its size, its structure and reporting lines, and observable behaviors such as how work is assigned, how meetings run and how problems are handled. Many sections allow a composite or disguised employer and ask you to say so. The profile is usually short and organized under headings, closer to a workplace briefing than an essay. Cite any course reading or data you use in APA 7, and pick a setting with enough day-to-day activity to support later units on motivation, teams and culture.
Inside the BU 302 Unit 1 example
The sample states its purpose and then describes the company's services and seasonal workforce, adding a federal source on how seasonal grounds work is. A structure section names every role and reporting line, then lists what a crew lead, an operations manager, an account manager and the owner can each decide, drawing on Mintzberg's idea of decentralization. The longest section describes behavior: the morning dispatch in the equipment yard, different habits in checking trailers, how a short crew or rain is handled, two standing meetings and the whiteboard crews stop to read. A short section names the division later units will study, and the last section explains which details were invented and why.
BU 302 Unit 1 rubric: what full points look like
Herzing's grading for this profile tends to weigh specificity of the setting, clarity of structure, focus on observable behavior and professional writing. Specificity earns full points when numbers, roles and routines are concrete enough that later papers can cite them. Structure is judged by clear reporting lines and, in stronger papers, by where decisions are made. The behavior criterion rewards things a visitor could see, such as a meeting or a whiteboard, over values an organization claims. Instructors also credit an honest statement of what is composite. Headings, a consistent briefing style and correct APA citations make up the writing criterion. Papers that stay useful across the term, because later units can point back to them, usually score best here.
Common BU 302 Unit 1 mistakes, and how to avoid them
The most common Unit 1 weakness is describing an organization through its mission statement instead of what people do there. Another is staying so general, a mid-sized company with several departments, that nothing can be analyzed later. Students often draw an organization chart but never say who decides what. Some profiles include confidential details about a real employer, which is risky and unnecessary. Others forget to mark invented details, leaving the instructor unsure what is real. Finally, choose a part of the organization to focus on. The sample names the maintenance division as the place later units will return to, which saves space and keeps the profile useful.
Get a BU 302 Unit 1 example written to your instructions
Send the Unit 1 instructions and the rubric from your BU 302 classroom, plus a line or two about the setting you plan to use all term. We write a custom example that names the work first, keeps behavior observable and marks every composite detail. First custom sample free, back in 24 to 48 hours.
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BU 302 Unit 1 questions, answered
Can I write about the company I actually work for?
Most sections encourage a real setting, and that is usually the point of Unit 1. What has to stay outside is anything the employer owns: internal reports, performance records, client details and the conduct of named colleagues. Describe the arrangement and the observable routine, change identifying detail, and say in a line that you have done so.
How specific does the setting have to be?
Specific enough that a later unit could apply a named theory to it and land somewhere. A department, a shift pattern, a team of a stated size and a decision that actually gets made are enough. An industry label on its own gives the rest of the term nothing to work with, and instructors in many sections mark exactly that thinness.
What if my workplace is small or unusual?
That tends to help rather than hurt. A five person operation makes reporting lines and informal influence easy to see, which is harder in a large employer where most of the structure sits out of view. Say what is unusual about it and keep the description concrete, since the profile is graded on what a reader can picture.
Where can I find a free BU 302 Unit 1 sample paper?
The full BU 302 Unit 1 profile is above and free to read, with margin notes on each section. Should you want one built around a different kind of workplace, tell us the industry and your prompt, and a free version will be written, usually within two days.
Can the BU 302 Unit 1 setting be made up?
In most sections, yes, as long as you say so. The sample uses a composite landscaping company and ends with a section listing what was invented and why. A composite lets you include realistic problems for later units without exposing a real employer.