Importance of Operation Management Assignment

Management and operations

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................3
P1 Roles and characteristics of a leader and a manager..............................................................3
P2 Roles of a leaders and the functions of a manager in different situational contexts..............4
P3 Different theories and models of approach............................................................................5
P4 Key approaches to the operations management ...................................................................7
P5 Importance of Operations Management in achieving Objectives..........................................8
P6 Factors Affecting Business environment...............................................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
In this era of competition , it is important to manage the affairs of the organisation in an
appropriate manner. For this, the managers and leaders plays a significant role. According to the
prevailing situations they make suitable strategy to reach the destination. Various approaches are
used by the managers to deal with a particular problem. Decision making is one of the major task
to be accomplished by the managers. In this assignment, the roles and responsibilities of the
leaders and the mangers are elaborated along with the importance of operation management. For
this, the company Marks & Spencer is taken into consideration.
Task 1
P1 Roles and characteristics of a leader and a manager
Marks & Spencer is a British multinational retailer company of clothing and accessories
in London. To beat the competitors at this time , it has introduced many new products also, for
example, home products, luxury food products etc. so as to attract more and more customers. It
has flat organisational structure with a managing director at the top having managers of
marketing, engineering and finance etc. Again , managers may, in turn, have many clerical
people or other employees working for them. Hence, the company is having only three levels of
employees for better flow of work.
Leaders in an organisation are the persons whom people follow while managers are
associated with the people who work for them. For the success of any business organisation, it is
important to have the leaders and mangers of strong personality and attitude to reach the target
with efficiency. Though both are responsible for the growth of organisation, still there is
difference between them. Managers have subordinates to work for them while leaders have
followers(Jacobs and et.al., 2014). Managers set or creates the goal while leaders create a vision
to accomplish the goals by directing people to do a particular task. Leaders are the agents to
innovate new things in an organisation. They embrace the change while managers try to stick
with the system which is better in their knowledge. Hence, we can say that leaders are of unique
qualities while the managers just mimic the attitude they learn from others. Leaders take risks by
adopting new methods while the mangers try to control the risk factor. Leaders try to plan for a
long term rather than the managers who thinks only for a short term. Leaders build relationships
while the mangers build systems and the processes to reach the goal. In this way, both have
several responsibilities upon them to attain the target.

To analyse the same, Fayolism Theory of business management is taken into
consideration. IT is introduced by French mining engineer Henri Fayol . This theory describes
six major roles of the managers ( forecasting, planning, organising, commanding, coordinating
and controlling) along with some principles to interact with a staff in a better way. According to
him, managers serves as a benevolent leader for the organisation . They supervise the employees
and direct them to do a particular task. Also in this theory , emphasis is given to the employees
who take initiation to innovate new things in the organisation.
Scientific management theory is also there which puts emphasis on cooperative work
environment where healthy relationship between the leaders and the employees will lead to
increase in efficiency (Asam and et.al., 2015).
Similarly, behavioural theory of leadership reflects the human behaviour with the help of
there relationship with the leaders. In M&S, transformational leadership approach is used where
employees can share their ideas with the managers to innovate new products. In this way, the
leaders and the mangers plays a vital role to achieve the target of the firm.
P2 Roles of a leaders and the functions of a manager in different situational contexts
Leaders and the managers are important functionality for any organisation. Depending
upon the situations they have to make the decisions. For this, they have to consider various
factors , like, characteristics of the employees, types of work, organisational
structures,management's influences etc.
At present time, the major task for the company M&S is to beat the prevailing
competition to attract more and more customers. H&M, French connection etc. are its major
competitors (Calais and et.al., 2017). To cope up with this situation, the mangers and the leaders
have to frame the rule accordingly to mange the affairs in a better way.
Earlier, autocratic leadership approach was used by the company where the leaders had a
complete control over the employees. Installing this, the employees were not able to
communicate with the managers in a better way and hence, they were not satisfied. This
ultimately had a after-effect on the performance of the employees. To beat the competitors at the
present time, the company has adopted transformational leadership approach. With the help of
this, now the employees can communicate the managers as and when they have any confusion.
This leads to their performance improvement and hence, efficient results are attained. The
mangers now entertain the ideas given by the employees to implement new products which are