Roles and Functions of a Manager and a Leader in Operations

Management and
Operations

Contents
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................3
LO 2............................................................................................................................................................3
The role and functions of a manager and a leader....................................................................................3
LO 3............................................................................................................................................................5
The roles and functions play by the leader and the manager respectively in operation function of an
organization.............................................................................................................................................5
LO 4............................................................................................................................................................7
An understanding the relation between a leader and a manager in a contemporary business
environment.............................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION...........................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES............................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Management refers to an activity to manage the resources of an organization. Resources
may include raw materials, machineries, human resource and so on. All these resources need to
get align to achieve the organizational goals and objectives. Management performs five basic
functions i.e. planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling. A manager is a person
whose roles and responsibility is to perform these above management function whereas a leader
is a person who make vision and set mission for his organization. To run the organization
successfully, it is very much necessary for the organization to plan for its effective operational
activities. For reference purpose this report has taken an example of a company, Marks and
Spencer. Marks and Spencer is a British multi-national company which specialized in
manufacturing high quality clothes, home products and food product (Chopra, Meindl and Kalra,
2013). The company was established in the year 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spenser.
The company has successfully opened 1463 stores by serving worldwide.
This report discuss about the roles and responsibilities of a leader and a manager. This
report also includes the different operational methods which are used by the company in
effective and efficient production of goods and services.
LO 2
The role and functions of a manager and a leader.
A leader is a person who has the capabilities to influence a person or a group of persons
and direct them towards the attainment of a specified objective or goal. It is the responsibility of
a leader to form mission and vision of his idea or organization. He is the one who thinks out of
the box and solves the issues of his followers. The role of a leader is as follows:
Required at all level: Leadership is such a task which is required at all the levels, whether at the
middle level of management or at lower level of management or at the top level of management.
A good leader has the ability to motivate his workforce or concern people. As in the case with
Marks and Spencer, there are all kinds of employee working at all the levels, a good leader is one
which has to motivate the employees of all levels and resolve their concerns and issues which
they may face into his work (Cruz and Rincon, 2012). When employees think that their leader
thinks and care about them then the workforce also feels motivated in their work and performs to
the best into it.
Representative of an organization: A leader is a person who is a representative of his whole
organization or people. He is the one who put the problem and issue in front of others on behalf
of is whole team. He is the one who takes responsibility of his own team. The success of his
team will be his success and the failure of his team will be his failure. As in the case with marks
and Spencer, the leader job is to represent the whole company on his behalf; Michael Marks and
Thomas Spencer in this company are the representative leaders. They are the one who forms