Role and Characteristics of Leader and Manager in Operations Management

MANAGEMNT
AND OPERATION

TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
P1 Role and characteristics of leader and manager.....................................................................1
P2 leader and manager role in several business situations..........................................................3
P3 Theories of leadership............................................................................................................5
P4 Operation management approaches........................................................................................6
P5. Importance and value of operations management in achieving business objectives.............8
P6. Factors within the business environment that can impact decision making of leaders and
managers......................................................................................................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Operation management (OM) is the process that aids management in managing business
activities in best possible manner and producing high quality goods to meet stakeholder
requirements. Present study is based on IKEA, it offers furniture, homeware items to mass
audience across the world (Chaudhry, 2018). Company has earned 41.3 billion revenues in the
year 2019. Furthermore, it has employed 211000 employees globally. Current assignment will
describe characteristics of leaders and managers. It will explain role and function of leader and
manager in several situations. In addition, report will explain situational leadership theory,
system leadership approach and contingency model of leadership. It will explain the uses of
TQM, lean manufacturing approaches in operation management. In addition, assignment will
highlight value of OM in the organisation and how approaches of OM help the company in
meeting organisational goal. Study will evaluate factors that impact on overall operations of
IKEA and affect operational efficiency of business unit.
P1 Role and characteristics of leader and manager
Leader is the person who is responsible for giving necessary direction to staff members so
that they can understand their job role and can perform it in workplace comfortably. On other
hand manager is the person who has responsibility to manage workforce (Shinde and Fleck,
2015). Each company hires people those who have good leading and managing capabilities. This
skill of them make them different from other people in business unit. IKEA aims to retain its
talented people in the organisation for longer duration and want to make them loyal towards the
brand, for that it always ensures that their leaders and managers put best efforts and contribute
well in accomplishing this goal successfully (Chiu, Balkundi and Weinberg, 2017). Difference
between leader and manager are described as below:
Bases Leader manager
Approach Leaders ask questions with
the employees and ensure that
all the employees are
performing their task in
effective manner.
Managers are responsible for
giving necessary direction to
its staff members so that
people perform duties well
and they make minimum
mistakes at workplace.
Followers Leaders make followers, as Managers work at top level
1

people admire their work and
they start following their path
which makes them able to
finish their allotted with
quality and on time
(Hamilton, 2017).
and they make subordinates
those who manage work in
the absence of manager.
These subordinates are
allotted work by mangers and
they have to look upon the
lower level employees
Leaders always encourage
new ideas and implement
these ideas into working
practices. This type of
approach help them in
performing well in
organisation and gaining
desired result in IKEA (Rolff
and et.al., 2019).
Managers always have great
ideas and all these ideas are
shared with upper level
authorities. On the bases of
these ideas decision are made
in the IKEA
Motivation aspect Leaders encourage changes
so that work can be done
smoothly and can be finish
with more quality.
Leaders implements
motivational style where they
encourage people and ask
their opinion. This type of
leading styles makes them
able to gain trust of people
and making them loyal. By
this way they follow
instruction carefully and
perform well in IKEA
Managers do not really accept
changes so easily, they face
lots of problems hence they
reach on changes.
Managers always implements
authoritarian style, they give
instruction to lower level
employees and ensure that
they work according to given
guidelines only. Managers do
not give much power to
employees hence sometimes
workers have to work under
pressure (Burgess, 2016).
Role and responsibilities Leaders create vision where Managers have to create goal
2