Roles and Characteristics of a Leader and a Manager in Operations Management

This document explains the different roles and characteristics of a leader and a manager in operations management. It explores the key approaches to operations management and the role that leaders and managers play. It also highlights the importance of operations management in achieving business objectives.

Management & Operations
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................4
P1 Explain different roles and characteristics of a leader and a manager...................................4
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................5
P2 Explain the role of a leader and the function of a manager in different situational contexts
within organisation......................................................................................................................5
P3 Explain different theories and models of approaches............................................................7
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................9
P4 Explain the key approaches to operations management and the role that leaders and
managers play..............................................................................................................................9
P5 Elaborate the importance and value of operations management in achieving business
objectives...................................................................................................................................10
TASK 4 .........................................................................................................................................12
P6 What are the factors impacting the operations management and decisions of Leaders and
Managers...................................................................................................................................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14
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INTRODUCTION
Operational management is the administration process of business to develop and
increase the efficiency within an organisation (Anand and Gray, 2017). Operational management
is responsible for converting raw material and labour(input) into final goods and services(output)
in order to maximize the profit of an organisation. The management is responsible for analysing
and understanding the national and international trends in the market and customer demand
along with available resources. The organisation chosen for this report is Starbucks. Starbucks is
an multinational chain of coffee established by Jerry Baldwin and his fellow teammates in
Washington, US in year 1971. The company is one of the largest coffee house chain and able to
established its brand name at international level. The report covers following topics- different
roles and characteristics of a leader and manger, contribution of role of a leader and function of a
manager applied in different situations, application of different theories and models of
leadership, demonstrate the key approaches to operations management and the role that leaders
and managers play, importance and value of operations management in achieving business
objectives and factors within the business environment that impact operational management and
decision making by leaders and managers.
TASK 1
P1 Explain different roles and characteristics of a leader and a manager.
The combination of both Manager and Leader is essential to lead global organization in
this dynamic business environment (Bozarth and Handfield, 2016). Someone who can shift their
roles and characteristics according to the conditions in order to accomplish the goals and
objectives. Managers and Leaders are the one who thinks strategically and are capable of
building effective teams. They build a healthy culture within organization, resolves conflicts and
inspire others in order to overcome with complex and uncertain situations.
Role of leader
 Supervisor : Leader is responsible for looking into all the activities within a team. In
context of Starbucks one regional leader is been appointed by the company who looks
into the issues which are not resolved at manger level.
 Organizer : A leader is one who has all the information regarding various tasks,
employees and documents. The leaders of Starbucks keeps the track of all the
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informations and functioning in all the stores and are responsible to solve all the issues
there.
Characteristics of leader
 Ability to Delegate : A leader is one who has the ability to delegate the roles and
responsibilities to its team members (Burns, 2018). In context on Starbucks the leader
ensures that effective teamwork take place, provide autonomy to its team members and
better decision-making in order to achieve the objective.
 Self-awareness : The self-awareness is one of the important characteristic of leader as
better understanding leads to more effective work. In Starbucks leaders don't depend on
their subordinated for information that is they are self aware of the each component to
take quick actions and results.
Role of Manager
 Front-man : Manager is consider as a source of inspiration, thus people look at him and
consider him as a person with authority, as a front-man. Managers in Starbucks are able
to maintain good communication with employees, which helped them to know more
about employees and customers. By this way they are able to make new strategies for the
problems which lead to upliftment in the sales volume.
 Communicator : Managers are dynamic in nature as they have to communicate with
outsiders as well as with insiders and are responsible for network building on behalf of
organization. The managers of Starbucks are well behaved, dressed and educated, who
tries to handle all the situations in very clam manner. The way they have trained there
employees is appreciating, all the stores are well maintained by them in terms of
cleanness and cloths management.
Characteristics of Manger
 Time management : Time management is one of the essential element in the life of
manager as their behaviour and attitude towards work is been followed by whole team
(Choi, Cheng and Zhao 2016). In Starbucks manager are always on time at workplace,
takes time to communicate with employees and focus on achieving goals throughout the
week.
 Respect for Employees : Manager is one who is responsible for directing the roles and
responsibilities within workplace in order to facilitate proper functioning, hence need to
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respect its employees. In context of Starbucks their manger tries to maintain friendly
relations with its employees and give due respect to them.
TASK 2
P2 Explain the role of a leader and the function of a manager in different situational contexts
within organisation.
There are multiple situations that takes place in organisation on daily bases which
requires due attention of managers and leaders (Choi, Wallace and Wang, 2018). Hence, it is
important for managers and leaders to understand the type of problem or issue that they have to
deal in order to develop the standardized techniques to provide solutions.
 Individual Employee Issues : These are those type of issues which take place on daily
bases that is personal conflicts, issue with supervisor, regarding division of work etc. The
function of manager in this context is to ensure smooth functioning within Starbucks.
Manger need to consider the organizing factor that is need to re-establish the internal
processes and structure in order to maintain consistency in daily operations. The role of
leader in solving employee issues would be to look into the delegation and empower
factors. Its the role of leader to identify and appoint job roles according to capabilities
and skills that is right role to right person. This practice help in providing effective
solutions to problems of employees within company as proper delegation of authorities
leads to less conflicts.
 Team Problems and Disconnect : In order to provide desire results its important for
teams to maintain high level performance and need to work in team towards common
goal. But problems and misunderstanding among team members take place at different
stages of operations which lead to decrease in performance level and has a negative
impact on the performance of Starbucks (de Sousa Jabbour, 2019). In such situation
manager function is to consider the staffing factor in order to ensure proper training,
positioning and assigning of team members to provide operational success within the
company. The team performance is very important as it makes or breaks the operational
process thus, manager function is to build and allocate correct teams to ensure completion
of task on time. Leader should act as a effective role model in these type of issues that is
they should conduct activities to outbursts the anger, do decisions with staff and team
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members to drive potential outcomes and identify uncaring attitudes and take corrective
measures accordingly.
 Inter-organizational conflict : Starbucks is operating at international level hence for
operating in different countries it establishes relation with the companies operating there
which leads to smooth functioning of operations (Fiorentino, 2016). Recently Tata Global
has tie up with Starbucks and both are operating together and this leads to conflict
between organisations in few cases as both are dependent on each other. Conflicts such as
changes in policies and rules , quality problems, issues regarding accruing raw material
and sources, etc. In this context managers need to focus on planning factor in order to
provide solutions to problems to meet goals and objectives of company. Proper
formulation of strategics and policies helps in setting realistic timelines and standards.
The role of leader is to analyse and identify the difficulty and unfavourable situations
which employees are facing due to changes in operation activities. They communicate
with the employees and tries to find solutions to the problems and in few cases they need
to communicate with the higher authorities to take corrective actions.
P3 Explain different theories and models of approaches.
Leadership is the art by which one motivates a group of people to work toward achieving
a common goal in an organization. Leadership styles are used in organizations to provide
direction to employees, for implementing plans and for motivating the members of organization.
These styles are broadly classified into different categories that are -
Situational Leadership
Situational leadership theory functions on assumption that according to situations the
style of leadership changes in order to provide effective results (Heizer, 2016). In diverse
circumstances, a leader should be able to adopt this style to become most effective and
successful. Basically this leadership style is not based on the skills of leader rather it is based on
the ability of leader to adjust according to the requirement of team members and organisation.
This theory was formed and design by Blanchard and Hersey and its implementation depends on
following situations-
 Telling: This style is used in those situations where whole team requires close
supervision and guidance.
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 Selling: This style is used in those situations where employee feel demotivated to
perform task or job role.
 Participating: This style is used when team or employees are competent in particular role
but have lack of confidence to complete task.
 Delegating: This style is used when team is performing quite well but only requires little
guidance.
Strength- This leadership style help in building comfortable working environment in
Starbucks as the implementation of this style in different situations somewhere match to the
needs of employees (Ivanov, Tsipoulanidis and Schönberger, 2017). Hence, they perform their
best in completion of task which helps in achieving targets on time.
Weakness- According to changes in the working environment of company(Starbucks),
the leader frequently changes their approach which lead to lot of confusion among team
members and employees due to which their performance is effected.
System Leadership
System leadership approach is used in order to analysis and identify all the inter relations
and inter-dependencies between various departments of the organisation and helps to get the
whole view while dealing with issues and problems. This style of leadership is well suited in
challenging situations that requires collective action.
Strengths: This leadership style provide great support to Starbucks as it facility the
adaptability to the changing environment that is decisions are taken after considering both
internal and external environment. Moreover the view points and suggestions of team members
and employees are consider which to better decision making and achievement of goals.
Weakness: The nature of inter-dependence has negative impact in the operations of
Starbucks as due to dependence factor sometime operations are not carried. Thus, lead to delay
that is tasks are not completed on time due to which company suffers losses.
Contingency Leadership Style
The contingency leadership style focus on the effectiveness of leader that is identify its
contingency in particular situation (Karlsson, 2016). Basically a leader can also make mistake
that is he might be effective in some conditions and might be ineffective in another situations. So
this theory suggested that before implementing leadership style a leader should examine each
situation properly to identify that leadership style is going to be effective or not.
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Strength: This leadership style helped in strengthening the position of Starbucks as
leaders easily link to the situations and have wide understanding of implementation of decisions
according to situations. Moreover the implementation of this theory provide information on
leaders style of dealing with different situations in order to analysis its impact on companies
profitability.
Weakness: This leadership style is quite understandable and lead to identification of
employees who are least performing and are consider as weakest link in the path towards
completion of task. Hence, this create negative working conditions within Starbucks.
TASK 3
P4 Explain the key approaches to operations management and the role that leaders and managers
play.
Operational management handle various activities within the organisation such as raw
material acquisition, quality control, rules and policies and balance the cost and expenses with
the budgets in order to accomplish the desire profit margin and goals and objectives of business
(Lee, 2018).
Six sigma
Six sigma is a methodology applied on global basis which helps in improving the
operational results. This approach helps organization in reducing costs, increase customer
satisfaction and reduce runtime (Lee and Tang, 2018). In context of Starbucks managers and
leaders are performing role of monitoring and controlling the activities which are carried by
trainers in providing training to new employees. Hence, effective training is provided to
employees which result in good performance of employees within the company.
Lean production
Lean Manufacturing is a technique that focuses on minimizing waste within
manufacturing unites of organization to add value to each level of operations and to maximize
the productivity. Within Starbucks mangers and leader functions to analyse and identify the
amount of wastage and according formulate the rules and take decisions to minimize the waste.
Queuing Theory
Queuing Theory is the mathematical study of operations research which provides support
in the business decisions regarding building of efficient and cost effective system in business.
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This theory helps in developing a balanced workflow system with main focus on customer
satisfaction. With help of this theory managers and leader within Starbucks play a role of
building a balanced system of work and minimizing the cost and expenses in the operations of
business (Leiras, 2019). They provide support to customer support team in order to make sure
that faster and effective services should be provided to customers.
Total Quality Management (TQM)
Total quality management is defined as a method of seeking excellence in the functioning
of business in order to minimize mistakes and to create best customer satisfaction. The managers
and leaders within Starbucks are responsible for formulating various strategies of quality
management to maintain its position in marketplace. They look into the activities of department
and accordingly formulate the policies to ensure speed and cost effective performance of
employees.
Just-in-Time Inventory
The just in time inventory system is the approach used by management in aligning the
inventory orders directly from suppliers in order to absorb maximum market demand. Its the
responsibility of managers and leaders to make sure proper follow of raw material so that
production activities don't suffer any shortage of resources within the company(Starbucks). They
maintain direct contact with the supplies and form and regulate the contracts with them.
Kaizen Approach
This is a continuous approach which is used in organisation to make improvement in
ongoing operations and activities because sometimes these small changes lead to significant
improvement (Machado, 2017). The role of manager and leader is to communicate with the
different departments and team members to get the information about current performance and
accordingly implement the changes in the strategies to improve the performance of its employees
in the operations of company(Starbucks).
Operational Functions
Operational functions is the part of management in which focus is on producing goods
and services for the targeted audience. Basically it includes all the functions and operations of
business in order to provide desire results. Therefore operational functions are involved in all
stages of activities that is in controlling and distribution (responsible for allocating resources and
controlling the activities), focus on product design according to the set budget, management of
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inventories and logistics to ensure proper functioning that is work didn't stop and maintaining
schedules.
P5 Elaborate the importance and value of operations management in achieving business
objectives
Operations Management is an important function of an organisation which helps them in
maintaining workflow and productivity. The objectives of this department is to maintain
productivity in manufacturing and production of goods and services. The quality of products
depends upon the process of this department (Feng and Shanthikumar, 2016).
The importance and values of operations management are-
 Production efficiency- Production is the function where efficiency should be achieved as
it involves cost and resources. The companies should focus on minimizing cost and
increasing efficiently using resources. The strategies of the business always focus on cost
effective techniques as it can differentiate the company from its competitors and
providing customers with products at prices better than competitors.
For example, in Starbucks they are having the capabilities to process goods with minimum cost
and good profit. They can manage to serve customers even at the peak hours. Their efficiency is
important as it contributes to the success of the business.
 Supply Chain Management- Operations management is important to maintain the
relationship with its suppliers. To maintain the long term relationship with suppliers it is
important to involve them in the decisions of the operations in an organisation. They
should follow up with its suppliers and update them about the demand and supply.
Starbucks have diversified suppliers so that they can maintain the supply of goods. They have a
global supply chain management has their operations are in countries with different taste. They
use a program CAFE- coffee and farmers equity where they select the farmers which can work
with Starbucks.
 Management of Inventory- The work of the operations department is to manage the
inventory so that it can be used at a better place where it gives profit. It is important to
manage inventory as it uses the company's resources and these resources should be
invested where it can give profits. The companies can outsource its inventory so that they
can sell it at good prices.
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Starbucks maintains the inventory with the help of its supply chain. They supply the stock to its
cafes to maintain productivity. In cafes inventory is managed manually as employees monitors
them. In the organisation it is managed by machines. The process is automated and inventory is
manage with supplier's management (Celik, 2017).
 Increased revenue- The operations department of an organisation is working on
increasing revenue which is achieved when they manage the resources effectively. They
focus on minimizing their operating cost and effectively use their resources to achieve
profits.
Starbucks has always innovated its operations to increase revenue. They have used sustainability
in their operations which has made them profitable. They focus on increasing the productivity of
employees so they installed machines where employee's work is effective. They are providing
with better facilities to make employees productive.
TASK 4
P6 What are the factors impacting the operations management and decisions of Leaders and
Managers
The organisations are in an environment which is both internal and external which is
business environment. They affect the decisions of an organisation as there are factors which
impact the organisation and these factors should be under the guidance of the managers and
leaders which make strategies for the organisation.
The factors impacting the operations management and decisions of leaders and managers
are-
 Relationship with the Stakeholders- Companies should maintain long term relationship
with its stakeholders. They should make its stakeholders feel that their opinions are
important for the decisions of an organisation. The stakeholders are assets to an
organisation so they should be given responsibilities. In the context of leaders and
managers, they are having a strategic position in an organisation so they should provide
them encouraging and developing environment. For example, Starbucks have a good
relationship with its stakeholders and help them use their entrepreneurial skills. They are
successful in every country they operate in which is because they have a good
relationship with its stakeholders.
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 Sustainability- The companies understood that they need to have sustainable operations
as their operations affect the society. It requires innovation in the business processes as
companies need to find ways to get better processes. In the context of leaders and
managers, they understand the dynamic environment and make strategies to have better
operations so that businesses can achieve productivity. The operations management help
the leaders and managers to make use of its resources. Starbucks has reduced its carbon
emission and increased its operations. They are looking for ways to innovate as they are
using plant based products to provide sustainability in its operations.
 Corporate Social Responsibility- Companies are working in the society and using the
resources of the society, they need to contribute their share of profit to them. It is the
responsibility of an organisation to serve its people. In the context of leaders and
managers, they should find the problems that society is having and what can organisation
do to help them. They should focus on these problems and plan their strategies. Starbucks
spend its profits in educating people and help people who are not getting food to eat.
They help non-profit organisations in providing training to its employees (He, Mak and
Rong, 2019). They hire minorities and give them opportunities to learn.
 Culture- The organisations are employees from different cultures. Their values and
ethics helps in making the business strategies. The impact of decisions of an organisation
depends on the culture. Role of the management is serving to different cultures and
making strategies to provide profits to the organisation. In the context of the manager and
leader, companies should have a diverse culture as they will help organisations to achieve
success and managers should provide them training to understand businesses. Starbucks
have a culture which focuses on providing services to customers. They give training to its
employees which is a part of their culture as they always want a good environment to its
customers. They employee from different culture to maintain diversity in the
organisation.
CONCLUSION
In accordance with the above report, it can be concluded that there are various roles and
responsibilities that a manager and leader has to perform in order to maintain smooth functioning
of business operations. There are various leadership styles that a leader can adopt to lead
followers. Choice of style is in accordance of the circumstances and organisational culture that is
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prevalent in company. There are various approaches identified by various prestigious leaders like
six sigma, total quality management, etc. which are adopted by leaders of all ages to maintain
order and to improve productivity of employees and organisation as well.
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REFERENCES
Books & Journal
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Journal of Operations Management. 53. pp.1-8.
Bozarth, C.C. and Handfield, R.B., 2016. Introduction to operations and supply chain
management. Pearson.
Burns, M.G., 2018. Port management and operations. CRC press.
Celik, E., 2017. A cause and effect relationship model for location of temporary shelters in
disaster operations management. International journal of disaster risk reduction. 22.
pp.257-268.
Choi, T.M., Cheng, T.C.E. and Zhao, X., 2016. Multi‐methodological research in operations
management. Production and Operations Management. 25(3). pp.379-389.
Choi, T.M., Wallace, S.W. and Wang, Y., 2018. Big data analytics in operations management.
Production and Operations Management. 27(10). pp.1868-1883.
de Sousa Jabbour, A.B.L. and et.al., 2019. Circular economy business models and operations
management. Journal of cleaner production. 235. pp.1525-1539.
Feng, Q. and Shanthikumar, J.G., 2016. Not-for-profit operations management.
Fiorentino, R., 2016. Operations strategy: a firm boundary-based perspective. Business Process
Management Journal.
He, L., Mak, H.Y. and Rong, Y., 2019. Operations management of vehicle sharing systems. In
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Heizer, J., 2016. Operations management, 11/e. Pearson Education India.
Ivanov, D., Tsipoulanidis, A. and Schönberger, J., 2017. Global supply chain and operations
management. A decision-oriented introduction to the creation of value. 2.
Karlsson, C. ed., 2016. Research methods for operations management. Routledge.
Lee, C.K.H., 2018. A review of applications of genetic algorithms in operations management.
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. 76. pp.1-12.
Lee, H.L. and Tang, C.S., 2018. Socially and environmentally responsible value chain
innovations: New operations management research opportunities. Management Science.
64(3). pp.983-996.
Leiras, A. and et.al., 2019. Operations management for social good: 2018 poms international
conference in Rio. Springer Nature.
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