| Course | LDR 306 Organizational Leadership: Building a Performance Culture (LDR/306) |
|---|---|
| Week | 1 |
| Paper type | Performance culture analysis |
| Length | about 1,007 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | BS in Business |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for LDR 306 Week 1
Fast to the Roadside, Safe Coming Home: Diagnosing the Performance Culture of a Denver Towing and Recovery Company
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
LDR/306: Organizational Leadership: Building a Performance Culture
Week 1 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Summit Towing and Recovery, its staff and its figures are composites written for a model paper.
Summit Towing and Recovery is a composite family-owned company founded in 1987 in Aurora, Colorado. It operates 95 tow trucks from four yards around the Denver metropolitan area, with 140 employees, including 104 drivers, 18 dispatchers and office and shop staff. Revenue of about $26 million comes from three sources: roadside assistance and towing for two national motor clubs and several insurers, police rotation towing for accidents and private customers. The motor club contracts set response time targets and send customer ratings back to Summit after each call. Over two years, average arrival time on motor club calls rose from 38 to 49 minutes, and one motor club has warned that Summit could lose territory. Turnover among drivers in their first year is about 50 percent. Owner and president Rosa Delgado believes the problem is culture. This paper defines performance culture, reviews research on culture and engagement and diagnoses Summit's culture.
Defining Culture and Performance Culture
Culture is the unwritten playbook of an organization: the beliefs and routines people absorb and follow without being told. A performance culture is one in which those shared values and habits make strong results the normal way of working: people know what good performance means, feel responsible for it and have the involvement and support to deliver it.
Culture Traits and Effectiveness
Denison and Mishra (1995) studied culture in a range of firms and identified four traits related to organizational effectiveness. Involvement refers to employees' engagement and sense of ownership. Consistency refers to shared values and well-coordinated systems. Adaptability refers to the ability to read and respond to the environment. Mission refers to a clear sense of purpose and direction. Involvement and adaptability were linked to growth, while consistency and mission were linked to profitability.
Culture Types and Outcomes
Hartnell et al. (2011) tested the competing values framework in a meta-analysis, which describes clan cultures focused on collaboration, adhocracy cultures focused on innovation, market cultures focused on competition and results and hierarchy cultures focused on control. They found that clan, adhocracy and market cultures each related positively to effectiveness criteria such as employee attitudes, operational performance and financial results, with clan cultures most strongly related to employee attitudes. Cultures emphasizing results alone did not guarantee positive employee outcomes.
Engagement and Results
Harter et al. (2002) conducted a meta-analysis of business units in many companies and found that units with higher employee engagement and satisfaction had better outcomes, including customer satisfaction, productivity, profit, lower turnover and fewer accidents. The relationships were large enough to matter in practice. For Summit, engagement is not a soft issue: it is linked to response times, ratings and safety.
Gathering Evidence
The diagnosis used an anonymous engagement survey completed by 112 employees, exit interview notes from 47 drivers who left in two years, two years of dispatch data and ride-alongs with six drivers.
Involvement
Drivers scored lowest on items about being asked for ideas and knowing why decisions are made. Dispatchers assign calls without explaining priorities, and drivers learn of changes to pay rules from posted notices. Exit interviews mention feeling like a number on the board.
Consistency
Summit's posted values are safety, speed and respect. In practice, speed dominates. Dispatchers praise drivers who take the most calls, and the monthly award goes to the driver with the most completed tows. Drivers reported that safety steps, such as setting cones and wearing high-visibility vests on highway shoulders, are skipped when calls stack up, and no one is corrected. The gap between stated and rewarded values is the clearest finding.
Summit says safety comes first, but the award on the wall goes to whoever towed the most cars.
Adaptability
Summit adapted quickly to motor club apps that dispatch calls and track trucks, but it has not adapted its scheduling to rising evening and weekend demand, which drives much of the slower response.
Mission
Long-time employees describe a strong sense of purpose: helping stranded people at their worst moments. Newer drivers rarely hear that purpose expressed. It lives in stories told at the main yard, not in training.
Culture Type
In the competing values framework, Summit has drifted from a clan culture, which the founders built in its early years, toward a market culture focused on call counts. The meta-analysis suggests that results-focused cultures can perform but often at the expense of employee attitudes, which fits Summit's turnover.
How Leaders Shape Culture
Leaders shape culture mostly through what they pay attention to, measure and reward, and through how they react in a crisis. At Summit, the dispatch board measures call counts, the monthly award honors volume and supervisors spend their time chasing late calls. Drivers read those signals more clearly than the safety poster in the break room. Changing the culture will therefore mean changing what leaders measure, praise and talk about, not adding new slogans.
Strengths to Keep
Summit has real strengths: a meaningful mission, experienced senior drivers, good equipment and quick adoption of dispatch technology. Customer ratings, when drivers arrive, remain high.
Gaps to Close
The gaps are involvement, consistency between safety values and rewards and the transmission of mission to new drivers. These connect to the business problems: low involvement and weak onboarding feed turnover, turnover leaves the company short of drivers at peak times and shortages slow response times.
Priorities for the Course
Three priorities will guide later weeks. First, understand what motivates drivers and dispatchers and redesign rewards so that safety and service count alongside speed. Second, use feedback and recognition to reinforce the behaviors Summit wants. Third, develop and empower new drivers so they stay and perform.
Conclusion
Culture shapes performance through involvement, consistency, adaptability and mission, and engagement links culture to outcomes such as customer satisfaction, productivity, turnover and safety. Summit's culture has a strong mission and capable people, but its rewards contradict its stated values and its new drivers feel uninvolved. Closing those gaps is the starting point for building a performance culture.
References
Denison, D. R., & Mishra, A. K. (1995). Toward a theory of organizational culture and effectiveness. Organization Science, 6(2), 204-223. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.6.2.204
Harter, J. K., Schmidt, F. L., & Hayes, T. L. (2002). Business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(2), 268-279. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.2.268
Hartnell, C. A., Ou, A. Y., & Kinicki, A. (2011). Organizational culture and organizational effectiveness: A meta-analytic investigation of the competing values framework's theoretical suppositions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(4), 677-694. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021987
What the LDR 306 Week 1 instructions ask
The first LDR 306 assignment usually asks students to examine organizational culture and its relationship to performance, often by evaluating the culture of an organization they know. Expect to define organizational culture and performance culture, describe how culture shows up in values, practices and behaviors, explain how engagement connects culture to results and identify strengths and gaps. Some prompts ask for a culture assessment tool or survey. A strong paper uses research on culture and engagement, gathers evidence from the organization rather than relying on impressions, distinguishes stated values from actual practices and identifies priorities a leader could act on. Cite scholarly sources in APA style.
How this LDR 306 Week 1 example is built
Summit's dispatch board shows the problem in numbers: average arrival time for motor club calls has risen from 38 to 49 minutes in two years, and the company loses about half its new drivers within 12 months. The paper defines performance culture as shared values and habits that make strong results the normal way of working. Research on four culture traits linked to effectiveness, a meta-analysis of competing culture types and a large study tying employee engagement to business-unit outcomes frame the diagnosis. Evidence from an engagement survey, exit interviews, dispatch data and ride-alongs shows a culture that praises speed and heroics but neglects involvement, consistency and care for drivers' safety. Three priorities follow for the rest of the course.
LDR 306 Week 1 grading rubric: where the points go
Culture papers are graded on how well they connect concepts to evidence. Higher marks go to work that defines culture and performance culture accurately, uses a research framework to organize the diagnosis and supports conclusions with data such as surveys, turnover and operating results. Distinguishing what an organization says it values from what it rewards in practice is a mark of strong analysis. The paper should identify both strengths to keep and gaps to close, with clear priorities. Evidence from more than one source, such as a survey and turnover records, makes the diagnosis harder to dismiss. Graders also notice when the student explains how engagement links culture to outcomes rather than simply asserting that a positive culture improves performance.
LDR 306 Week 1 help: mistakes to avoid
Students often describe culture with a few adjectives, such as friendly or fast-paced, and stop. Use a framework and evidence, such as survey items, turnover patterns and observed routines. Another frequent weakness is taking the company's posted values at face value; compare them with what gets rewarded and tolerated. Some papers treat engagement as happiness. Engagement refers to involvement and enthusiasm for work, and research ties it to outcomes such as safety and productivity. Others identify many problems with no priorities. Choose two or three that matter most. Finally, avoid blaming employees for culture; leaders shape culture through what they pay attention to, reward and model.
Related LDR 306 sample papers
Other LDR 306 week samples
- LDR 306 Week 2: Motivation
- LDR 306 Week 3: Behavioral Management and Feedback
- LDR 306 Week 4: Development and Empowerment
- LDR 306 Week 5: Performance Improvement Plan
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LDR 306 Week 1 questions, answered
What does LDR 306 Week 1 usually cover?
It usually covers organizational culture and performance culture, how culture and engagement affect results and how to assess an organization's culture for strengths and gaps.
Where can I find a free LDR 306 Week 1 sample paper?
The Week 1 culture diagnosis of a composite Denver towing and recovery company, with its survey findings and priorities, is shown above.
What is a performance culture?
A performance culture is a set of shared values, norms and habits in which high standards, accountability, involvement and learning are the normal way of working.
Does employee engagement affect business results?
Large studies have found that business units with higher engagement tend to have better customer satisfaction, productivity, safety and retention.
How do you assess organizational culture?
Combine surveys of employees, interviews, observation of routines and decisions, and data such as turnover and performance, and compare stated values with what is actually rewarded.
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