MGMT 5003 Module 1 Management Functions Analysis Example

Pizza, Fuel and 2,944 Stores: How Casey's Plans, Organizes, Leads and Controls

Student Name

American College of Education

MGMT5003: Foundations of Business Management

Module 1 Assignment

Instructor Name

June 7, 2027

Introduction

I teach chemistry at a high school in suburban Des Moines and am beginning an MBA without a business degree. For this first paper I chose a company I pass every day: Casey's General Stores, the convenience store chain headquartered in Ankeny, Iowa. Its newest annual report, covering the twelve months to April 30, 2026, describes 2,944 stores in 19 states, about 71 percent of them in towns of fewer than 20,000 people, and revenue of about $17.6 billion (Casey's General Stores, Inc., 2026). This paper borrows the four classic management functions, the planning, organizing, leading and controlling cycle taught in most introductory courses, to explain how the company is run, drawing every example from the annual report.

Why the Four Functions

The four functions trace back to Henri Fayol's early twentieth-century description of management. Some researchers later argued that observing real managers showed a messier picture of short, interrupted tasks. Carroll and Gillen (1987), reviewing that debate, concluded that the classical functions still describe what managerial work is for, even if a manager's day looks fragmented. Lamond (2004) went further, arguing that Fayol's functions and later observational studies describe the same work from two angles: one says what managers are trying to accomplish and the other what their days look like. For a newcomer to business, the functions offer a sensible way to read a company's annual report and sort what it says into four questions.

Planning

Planning means choosing targets and the route to them. Casey's fiscal 2026 report marks the end of a three-year strategic plan announced in June 2023, built around three objectives: grow the number of stores, accelerate the food business and improve operational efficiency (Casey's General Stores, Inc., 2026). The plan set specific targets. The company had aimed to add 350 stores over three years and instead built or acquired 504, including a large acquisition of stores from Fikes Wholesale in Texas and neighboring states. Diluted earnings per share reached $19.16 in fiscal 2026, up 30.9 percent from the prior year. The report also states that a new three-year plan would be introduced in June 2026, showing that planning at Casey's runs in repeated cycles rather than as a single event.

Organizing

Organizing is the work of putting staff, money and equipment where the plan needs them. Casey's keeps many functions central. Its headquarters, called the Store Support Center, sits next to one of three distribution centers; the other two are in Terre Haute, Indiana, and Joplin, Missouri. Stores order grocery and general merchandise electronically, and most are supplied from those centers. Unusually for a retailer, Casey's delivers most of the fuel to its own stores, using a fleet of more than 500 tractors, and owns a fuel terminal in Waco, Texas. Almost every store has a full kitchen, so pizza and other prepared foods are made on site. The company reports a single operating segment, because its stores sell similar products in similar ways, which suggests an organization built around a standard store model. Field management, which oversees groups of stores, makes up only about one percent of the workforce, so each district manager must supervise many stores at a distance.

Leading

Leading means directing and motivating people. Casey's employed 23,490 full-time and 26,358 part-time team members at the end of fiscal 2026, and about 94 percent of them work in stores (Casey's General Stores, Inc., 2026). The company describes its values with the acronym CARES, for Commitment, Authenticity, Respect, Evolving and Service, and says these shape how team members treat one another and guests. It also describes development programs for kitchen managers, store managers and district managers, a leadership certification and a finance course for managers without finance training. For a workforce spread across thousands of small-town stores, these programs are how headquarters tries to make sure a store manager in Missouri leads the same way as one in Ohio.

Controlling

Controlling compares results with goals and corrects course. Casey's reports several measures that serve this purpose. Same-store sales, which compare stores open for the full periods being compared, rose 5.2 percent for prepared food and dispensed beverages and 3.9 percent for grocery and general merchandise in fiscal 2026. The company tracks the share of revenue left after the cost of goods sold for each category: about 58.6 percent for prepared food, 35.8 percent for grocery and general merchandise and 14.1 percent for fuel. The report credits the improvement in prepared food partly to lower waste. These figures let managers see quickly whether a store, a product line or a pricing decision is working.

How the Functions Connect

The four functions do not operate separately at Casey's. The plan to accelerate the food business required organizing decisions, such as installing kitchens in acquired stores before converting them to the Casey's brand. It required leadership, through training programs for kitchen managers. And it required control, through same-store food sales and food margins. The result is visible in the numbers: prepared food and dispensed beverages produced about $1.78 billion of revenue in fiscal 2026, only about 10 percent of the total, but about $1.04 billion of revenue after the cost of goods sold, roughly a quarter of the company's total. A plan that emphasized food made sense because control data showed where the money was.

Limits of the Evidence

An annual report is written by the company for investors, so it has limits as evidence. It describes values and training programs but cannot show whether store managers actually live by them on a busy Friday night. It reports averages across nearly 3,000 stores, which can hide weak districts. And it emphasizes successes, such as beating the store growth target, more than difficulties. To balance it, a fuller study would add employee reviews, local news coverage and conversations with store staff. Even so, the report is audited where it concerns financial results and is legally required to be accurate, which makes its numbers a sound foundation for a first look at how the company is managed.

What I Learned

As a teacher, I recognize the four functions in my own work. I plan units, organize a lab so that thirty students can run an experiment safely, lead a room of teenagers and check their understanding with quizzes. Casey's operates the same cycle on a vastly larger scale. What surprised me was how much of the company's planning depends on control data: the decision to grow food was based on margins, not on taste. That is a lesson I expect the rest of the MBA to develop, and one I could apply to how my school's science department decides which programs to keep.

Conclusion

Casey's annual report shows each management function at work. Planning appears in a three-year plan with measurable targets that the company exceeded. Organizing appears in a central support center, its own distribution and fuel delivery and a standard store model. Leading appears in stated values and development programs for nearly 50,000 team members. Controlling appears in same-store sales and category margins. Together they explain how a company that began in small Iowa towns grew into one of the largest convenience store operators in the country.

References

Carroll, S. J., & Gillen, D. J. (1987). Are the classical management functions useful in describing managerial work? Academy of Management Review, 12(1), 38-51. https://doi.org/10.2307/257992

Casey's General Stores, Inc. (2026). Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2026. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/726958/000072695826000046/casy-20260430.htm

Lamond, D. (2004). A matter of style: Reconciling Henri and Henry. Management Decision, 42(2), 330-356. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251740410513845