Situational Approach to Operations Management

The assignment discusses the situational approach to operations management, which enables leaders to create a suitable environment for individuals to work effectively up to their potential. It emphasizes the need for strong communication among managers to address various issues and improve performance. The situational approach is reviewed in relation to quality, safety, sustainability, and green logistics, as well as public service operations management.

Management & Operations

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
1. Overview of the Mark and Spencer....................................................................................1
2. Defining manager and leader with comparing their roles and characteristics....................1
3. Managerial functions and Leadership roles through management theories.......................2
4. Examples of different situations.........................................................................................4
5. Management and Leadership theories................................................................................5
6. Strength and weaknesses of different theories and approaches..........................................6
7. Conclusion and recommendations......................................................................................6
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................7
1. Operation Management and key approaches......................................................................7
2. Roles and responsibilities of leaders and managers...........................................................8
3. Importance of the key approaches to operations management..........................................9
4. Effectiveness of operation management approaches........................................................10
5. Impact of external business environment factors on operational management...............10
6. Application of operations management...........................................................................11
7. Conclude and suggest recommendations for future improvements.................................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
Operations management is core area of any business that is concerned with designing and
control overall process of production. It is specific branch or field of an organisation that
conducts all works regarding growth and development of business. This report is based on Marks
& Spencer which is situated at London, United Kingdom and sell several branded goods for
example Kellogg's Corn Flakes etc. This report covers details about leader and manager with
their roles and characteristics and provide differences in between leadership roles and managerial
functions. It also covers theories related to management and leadership that support growth and
sustainable performance of an organisation. Further, it includes major strengths and weaknesses
of such approaches or theories and its impacts to the business activities.
TASK 1
1. Overview of the Mark and Spencer.
Marks & Spencer, one of major British multinational retailer, headquartered at
Westminster City, London, UK. M & S is specialised in retailing of home items, clothing’s, food
and luxury products. Company was incorporated in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas
Spencer. Across UK, they have about 979 stores from which 615 only sell food items.
Marks & Spencer have introduced a flatter, less hierarchical management structure for
enabling speedier decision making and for bringing customers closer to their business (About-
Mark&Spencer, 2018). New operating committee is established for development and execution
of strategy as well as accountable for day to day operations of the business. A simpler
management structure is been implemented for more focused running of teams and to make
efficient decisions for moving closer to customers. Some roles in organisation are reduced, as
part of retailer's strategy to work more efficiently and simply.
2. Defining manager and leader with comparing their roles and characteristics
Manager and leader both have a great role to play in any company. Manager is an
essential link in between the organisation and its related stakeholders such as customers,
workers, suppliers, society, government etc. on the other hand, a leader encourages, inspires and
influence his or her team members to work willingly (Subramanian and Ramanathan, 2012).
Further, manager and leader are defined with their roles and characteristics. These are as follows:
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Basis of comparison Manager Leader
Objectives Manager creates goal for an
organization. They focus on
measuring, setting and
attaining goals (Rose and
Hudgins, 2012).
Leaders inspire and engage
team members towards vision
of organization. They are
responsible for turning visions
into reality (Akkerman,
Farahani and Grunow, 2010).
Innovation Managers stays with plans,
structures, systems and
processes that would work to
make them better.
Leaders tries to innovate
something new and grasp
changes in M&S.
Risks Taking They look to control or avoid
risks or problems. They work
for minimize risks.
Even if they fail, they are
willing to try new things or
take risks, as they believe it
would lead to success.
Decision Makes decision Facilitates decision
Focus Their focus is on procedures
and process.
Their focus is on people or
team.
Style They use transactional style in
managing work and employees
in Marks & Spencer.
They uses Transformational
style of management.
Aim Their aim is growth and
development of whole team.
Their aim is of attaining
required goals or objectives of
M&S.
3. Managerial functions and Leadership roles through management theories
Managerial Functions:
Functions of management derived from Henry Fayol's general principles:
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 Planning: As per Henry Fayol, among five managerial functions deriving a better plan is
the hardest function. It requires active participation of entire organisation (Sheu, 2010).
Managers makes various plans regarding operations or tasks performed in M&S. Organizing: A well organised enterprise can function effectively. Manager have to
organize their staffs, capital, raw materials for smooth running and building a better
working structure in organisation. Commanding: Management have the commanding over their employees or staffs.
Employees would get to know what exactly is required by them, through clear orders and
instructions given by manager. With commanding, they motivate and encourage team or
staffs to take initiative. Coordination: It is managerial function to harmonize all activities and employees for
better functioning in organisation (Radnor, Bateman and Upton, 2015). It stimulates
discipline and motivation within a team or group. Controlling: Management in an organisation does controlling function. They measure
actual performance and compare those with standards based on organisational objectives.
Then take preventive measures for correcting deviations.
Leadership role from the Change-Production-Employee (CPE) Model:
In CPE model, leadership roles are derived by three dimensions, that are Change centred,
Product and Employee focused (Yang, Hong and Modi, 2011).
 Product centred:
◦ Resource allocator
◦ Goal setting
◦ Problem solving
◦ Manager by exception
◦ Producer
◦ Monitoring
◦ Administrator
 Employee centred:
◦ Consideration
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◦ Leader
◦ Mentor
◦ Negotiator
◦ Coordinator
◦ Intellectual stimulator
◦ Facilitator
 Change centred
◦ Innovator
◦ Inspirational motivator
◦ Idealized influencer
◦ Inspirer
◦ Entrepreneur
4. Examples of different situations
Roles of leader: As a leader in a multinational company, have to play multiple roles
within team and in organisation as a whole. When a major supplier of Marks and Spencer was
unable to provide required stocks for retail stores. Leader of the branch team have taken make
plans for allocation of resources, to meet demands of store.
When there was a conflict among team members, leader of group played role of negotiator for
redressing issues among staffs.
When organisation have introduced new management or organisational structure, team
leader played the role of mentor for giving training to employees for adopting those changes.
In M&K, when there was requirement for innovation in enterprise, leader encourage group for
innovation, through being motivator, inspirer and influencer for employees to come up with new
ideas.
Functions of manager: Store Manager of M&S various functions that he have to perform for
smooth performance of their operations. When a new retail store is been established, manager of
the store have made a plan for establishing new branch. He designed a proper plans for what
should be offered in store, how much quantity, promotional or marketing strategies, etc. After
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planning, organising is been done. Manager organize each and every tasks or operations,
products, employees, etc. for smooth functioning of store. Through commanding clear and
defined goals and objectives or targets are been given to staffs. Then coordination is been
established among different tasks and employees for effective results. The results attained is been
measured by him, in controlling function and been compared with set standards. The deviations
that have arisen been solved by making counter actions.
5. Management and Leadership theories
 Situational theory of Leadership: This approach is developed by Hersey and
Blanchard. According to this leadership theory there are four main leadership styles
(Accomazzi, Henneken and Rots, 2012). Which are been listed below:
◦ Telling: Leader in a group tells team members about what to do and how to do that,
in this leadership style.
◦ Selling: In this leadership style involves much back and forth between leaders and
members. Ideas and message are been sold by leader to get team to buy into activity.
◦ Participating: In this style, members in groups are allowed to take part or role in
coming up with ideas in decision making, through offering less direction or control.
◦ Delegating: Most of the decisions and responsibilities are taken by group members
for various tasks. This style is characterized by hands off approach to leadership,
through less involvement.
 System Leadership theory: This approach enables leaders in enterprise for creating an
environment or conditions where individuals at different levels can work effectively upto
their potential. System leadership can be characterised by two distinct attributes that are
collaborative and crosses boundaries (Saucedo-Martínez, Pérez-Lara and Vasant, 2017).
Particular mindset and way of thinking and approaches to leadership role, is most
importantly required by system leadership. This can be evidenced through following:
◦ Personal core values: By taking risks of shared purpose through inspiring.
◦ How they perceive: Gathered data or information from outside their area of work are
evaluated or fresh approaches to improve current thinking is applied.
◦ Relate to others: Adapting to different standards and approaches, services are
connected.
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◦ Behaviours and actions: By creating systems for succession, capability of employees
are developed.
◦ Personal qualities and way of being: Developing collaborative plans, influence
better results.
6. Strength and weaknesses of different theories and approaches
Situational theory of leadership
Strength Weaknesses
Valid and reliable approach, to achieve
effective leadership because it is grounded in
experiential research.
This approach suffers from inadequately of
literature.
Focuses on a single, the best type of leadership
(e.g., trait approach) to emphasizing the
importance of a leader's style and the demands
of different situations.
When put into practice, it becomes a complex
model.
Data on leadership styles are supplied in
contingency theory which is useful for
developing leadership profiles (Dekker,
Bloemhof and Mallidis, 2012).
It is reactive in nature. Suggests what can be
done in a given situation.
System Leadership Theory:
Strength Weaknesses
It can be learned through own experiences. No definite list of leadership traits and doesn't
take situational effects into account.
Prescriptive and practicality value. Prescriptions and matching of this model may
not be completely valid.
There is proof of intuitive appeal and impact as
leader is out front.
There are limited research supporting this
model (Singhal and Singhal, 2012).
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7. Conclusion and recommendations
It can be concluded from this report that the theories of management and leadership
models when applied to the company, better results can be obtained. According to the theories,
leaders and managers have different roles and responsibilities within an organisation that they
have to perform for effective performance of team or staffs. Theories of management such as the
Situational theory and System theory used for focusing on responses on the prevailing changes in
the organization.In which the leaders can make efforts to eliminate various situations for
resistance to change.
TASK 2
1. Operation Management and key approaches
Operation management refers to interchanging of materials and information’s from
acquisition of raw materials to delivery of finished goods to final consumers (Naphade, Banavar
and Morris, 2011). Marks and Spencer's performance is heavily relied on effective operation
management. In M&S customers are the starting point of supply chain. As soon as customer’s
places order for product, operation management starts. Planning departments in stores prepare
plans for material requirements. Inventory department’s checks for enough stocks for meeting
demand and also determines the supplied products by suppliers are of quality and required
specifications. Customer’s services are provided to their customers in order to retain them.
Key approaches of operation management in M&S:
 Just in Time (JIT) approach: Company use this approach to improve efficiency and
reduce waste by acquiring goods only as they need them for the production process,
which cut down inventory costs (Wang and Li, 2010). Producers required to forecast
demand accurately in this method. Locating, selecting and developing mutual relations
with supliers in JIT purchasing. Where there is lack of proper involvement of employees,
JIT cannot work properly in those businesses.
JIT aims at following:
◦ Eliminating waste during purchase process.
◦ At supplier's end, waste is been eliminated
◦ Wastage from purchased inventory is been minimised.
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 Total Quality Management (TQM): It is a management approach for long–term
success through customer satisfaction. All members of enterprise participate in improving
products, processes, culture and services. There are few elements of TQM:
◦ Customer focused: Level of quality is determined by customers. To foster quality
employees are provided training, enhance design process, new measuring tools, etc.
◦ Total employee involvement: Towards attaining common goals, all employees
participate in various activities. High-performance work systems is integrated for
continuous improvement in efforts with normal business operations.
◦ Process centered: On process thinking company TQM is focused on. Process is
improved for retaining quality of various products or services offered by M&S.
◦ Strategic and systematic approach: To achieve an organisation's vision, mission and
goals, strategic and systematic approaches are used to manage quality.
2. Roles and responsibilities of leaders and managers
Roles and responsibilities of Manager:
 Management of Resources: Managers play a leading role in managing both resources
and employees in organisation. The main role of manager in M&S is to have oversight of
inventory, purchasing and supplies for managing stores. Human resources tasks include
determining needs, hiring employees, overseeing assignment of employees and planning
staff development.
 Goal setting: Managers in an organisation set goals and objectives for various
departments. Employees have to clearly communicate about the set targets that they have
to achieve (Subramanian and Ramanathan, 2012).
 Sales generation: Depending on company's fiscal cycle, store manager of M&S have to
meet monthly, quarterly or annual sales goals.
 Safety and security: Manager is primarily responsible for the safety and security of all
employees and customers in stores during business hours (Rose and Hudgins, 2012).
 Hiring, Training and development: Manager in M&S store ensures that staffing levels
are competent enough to operate effectively, and ensures that they receive necessary
training for their job or tasks.
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Roles and responsibilities of Leaders:
 Influence and Motivate: Leader in an organisation have to influence and motivate their
team for effective performance. Influenced and motivated team would give their best for
attaining goals and targets of M&K.
 Create vision: Leaders in M&K clearly defines visions for team for where they have to
reach and how they are going to achieve those goals (Tayur, Ganeshan and Magazine,
2012).
 Inspire Trust: They inspire members in a team to trust each other and to have belief on
team spirit. Leaders in organisation becomes a credible leader that others chooses to
follow.
 Execute Strategy: Using a disciplined processes results are been achieved consistently
with and through others. Plans are been formulated for performing various tasks in an
organisation.
 Train potential employee: Leader in a group unleashes the ability of each individual in
team for improving their performances, career development and to solve problems
(Brown, Blackmon and Maylor, 2013).
3. Importance of the key approaches to operations management
Operations management refers to management of various business activities within an
organisation for creating a high level of efficiency. To maximise profit of an enterprise, labour
and materials are efficiently converted into goods and services (Operations-management. 2018).
Importance and values of key approaches to operations management in M&S are:
 Planning: How management utilize available resources to cope with various situation is
described as planning. Planning process helps M&S to cope up with changing situations
or environment. (Akkerman, Farahani and Grunow, 2010).
 Designing: With product development, designing starts, including various features and
characteristics of products to be sold. Maintain layout with full facilities, machineries to
use in production, in system design through monitor and controlling, information system
is very important to improve performance. It is closely assessed with product design in
detail and customer expectations.
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 Managing: For successful operations, most important and necessary part is team work.
Through employee encouragement, systems are managed in M&S which is effective in
improving their performance.
 Coordinating: Various roles and responsibilities of staffs and operational team is been
coordinated (Sheu, 2010). Within team members and colleagues, manager performs two
types of integration reporting, i.e., as vertical and horizontal reporting.
4. Effectiveness of operation management approaches.
Operation management approaches in an organisation plays an important role for
improving operational efficiencies through their effectiveness. Effectiveness of an organisation is
related to efficiency of their managers and leaders.
Efficiencies of operations can be improved by follows:
 Quality services or products: Operation management approaches identifies appropriate
level of quality for M&S products and services. Their key focus is on balancing quality
with cost effective solutions (Radnor, Bateman and Upton, 2015).
 Focus on customers: Approaches focuses on their customers to satisfy their needs and
desires. For this they would improve their operation process and efficiencies of their
employees.
 Make use of Human Resources: These approaches improves efficiency of various
operations within organisation, through fully utilization of human resources. They
motivate and encourages employees in M&S for increasing their performance.
 Focus on Training and growth: Marks & Spencer managerial and leadership must
understand strengths and weaknesses of different individuals within team or organisation
for making action plan for improving effectiveness of enterprise operations.
5. Impact of external business environment factors on operational management.
Environmental factors will be impacting business especially that which is related to
external business likes that of economic, political, technological, socio-cultural and international
dimensions. All of them will be impacting business and growth of firm especially on the
managerial decisions made by leaders and managers with having some impact on wider
community as well (Yang, Hong and Modi, 2011).
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Technological- This will be most influential factor for any type of decisions like that of
changing quality for products and services. Especially, those related to investments made on new
technologies and adapted by M&S.
Socio-cultural- The customs and values of society will also be impacting decision making of
leaders and managers both. Like there are many factors of society including beliefs which are
different for various types of workers who are working. So leaders and managers need to give
attention to each of them (Accomazzi, Henneken and Rots, 2012).
Economic- This will be cost and budget factor of company, which needs to be considered by
leaders and managers so that they are focusing on interest rates. The other factor like that of
purchasing power of customers should also be focused by manager into their decision regarding
production of products.
Political and legal- This would refer to laws and regulations which are made and regulated by
government and legal system of various countries (Saucedo-Martínez, Pérez-Lara and Vasant,
2017). These facts will be impacting decision made by managers in way of formation of policies
and rules for company.
6. Application of operations management
In order to evaluate or lower down the impacts of above stated factors, it is required that
managers are making plans which are suiting and lowering down impacts. This will includes
application of operations management to manage factors that are impacting wider business
environment.
Manager and leaders need to firstly make proper planning and then execution of those
plans so that they are able to mitigate risk caused by all above mentioned factors as said by Rose
and Hudgins (2012). Managers of M&S should be giving proper training to all employees
regarding impacts of factors such as political and economic so that they are prepared for the
unforeseen risk and threats. According to Sheu (2010), it was included that leaders should
managers should be implementing approaches to operation management like that of JIT or lean
functions and they will be ensuring better quality of products.
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Leaders should be motivating employees not to leave organisation at time of pressure and
rather helping them with the conflicts and stress which they are suffering. This will be helping
them to lower down the impact of socio-culture if there are any differences between various
groups of individual. As per Wang and Li (2010), managers must be planning for budget control
so that they are been able to control overvalue of cost and expenditures.
7. Conclude and suggest recommendations for future improvements
From this task, it can be concluded that different type of issues can be faced by workers.
It is important to make sure that appropriate steps are taken by managers or leaders so that they
understand the areas of improvement and support accordingly. In order to perform any job,
employees are required to have certain set of skills and capabilities. In this context, proper
monitoring should be done so that through training performance of workers can be improved.
For the future, cited firm should focus on motivating their employees as it helps to make
them perform with their full efficiency. Apart from this, it can be recommended that
management should have strong communication with employees so that they convey their issues
and appropriate steps are taken by management to solve them.
CONCLUSION
Leaders and managers have various roles and responsibilities within an organisation that
they have to perform for effective performance of team or staffs. Manager and leader both have a
great role to play in any company. It can be concluded from this report that management theories
and leadership models when applied to the company then better results can be obtained. Theories
of management such as the contingency theory which focuses on the responses on the prevailing
changes in the organization and in which the leaders can make efforts in eliminating the
situations of resistance to change. Situational approach enables leaders in enterprise for creating
an environment or conditions where individuals at different levels can work effectively upto their
potential. It is important to make sure that appropriate steps are taken by managers or leaders so
that they understand the areas of improvement and support accordingly. Strong communication
should be maintained by management for effectiveness in performance and redressing various
issues.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Accomazzi, A., Henneken, E. and Rots, A., 2012, September. Telescope bibliographies: an
essential component of archival data management and operations. In Observatory
Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems IV (Vol. 8448, p. 84480K). International
Society for Optics and Photonics.
Akkerman, R., Farahani, P. and Grunow, M., 2010. Quality, safety and sustainability in food
distribution: a review of quantitative operations management approaches and
challenges. Or Spectrum, 32(4), pp.863-904.
Brown, S., Blackmon, K. and Maylor, H., 2013. Operations management: policy, practice and
performance improvement. Routledge.
Dekker, R., Bloemhof, J. and Mallidis, I., 2012. Operations Research for green logistics–An
overview of aspects, issues, contributions and challenges. European Journal of
Operational Research, 219(3), pp.671-679.
Radnor, Z.J., Bateman, N. and Upton, D.M. eds., 2015. Public Service Operations Management:
A Research Handbook. Routledge.
Sheu, J.B., 2010. Dynamic relief-demand management for emergency logistics operations under
large-scale disasters. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation
Review, 46(1), pp.1-17.
Singhal, K. and Singhal, J., 2012. Imperatives of the science of operations and supply-chain
management. Journal of Operations Management, 30(3), pp.237-244.
Subramanian, N. and Ramanathan, R., 2012. A review of applications of Analytic Hierarchy
Process in operations management. International Journal of Production
Economics, 138(2), pp.215-241.
Tayur, S., Ganeshan, R. and Magazine, M. eds., 2012. Quantitative models for supply chain
management (Vol. 17). Springer Science & Business Media.
Wang, X., Li, D. and Li, Y., 2010. A production planning model to reduce risk and improve
operations management. International Journal of Production Economics, 124(2), pp.463-
474.
Yang, M.G.M., Hong, P. and Modi, S.B., 2011. Impact of lean manufacturing and environmental
management on business performance: An empirical study of manufacturing
firms. International Journal of Production Economics, 129(2), pp.251-261.
Online
About-Mark&Spencer. 2018. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.marksandspencer.com/>
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