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

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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