Comparison between roles and characteristics of managers and leaders

Management and
Operations
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Table of Contents
Introduction.....................................................................................................................................3
Task 1..............................................................................................................................................3
P1 Comparison between roles and characteristics of managers and leaders..............................3
Task 2..............................................................................................................................................5
P2 Role of a leader and function of a manager in different situational contexts.......................5
P3 Different theories and models of approach...........................................................................6
Task 3..............................................................................................................................................8
P4 Key Approaches to operations management.........................................................................8
P5 Importance and value of operations management in achieving business objectives.............9
Task 4............................................................................................................................................10
P6 Factors within the business environment that impact decision-making..............................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
References.....................................................................................................................................12
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Introduction
All the activities that take place within business with a view to increase value are known
as part of its operations. Designing and controlling the process of those activities with a focus on
the optimum utilisation of the resources is operations management (Grabner, 2019). This report
is prepared with the focus on the role of management and the leadership on improving the
operational management process of an organisation. With a view to enhance understanding of
the contents present in this report, UBER Technologies Inc. is taken as company for case study.
This company is commonly known as Uber. It is an American multinational company
headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded by Garrett Camp and Travis
Kalanick in 2009 and offers aggregator services for vehicles as taxi, food delivery, freight
transportation, package delivery, etc. This report presents a discussion on the roles and
characteristics of a leader and manager in the organisation. Also, discussed below are the
contributions of the managers and the leaders in the different situations that arise in the
organisation. Various theories and models of management applicable to leaders are presented
below. In the final segment of the report, key approaches, importance and value of operational
management is discussed with a view of their contribution in achieving business objectives of
the Uber.
Task 1
P1 Comparison between roles and characteristics of managers and leaders
Leaders are those who are designated to lead the organisation to road to success while
mangers are those who are responsible for taking company ahead on the path that leaders have
enlightened (Streich, 2016). For success of an organisation, it is very important to have
managers who have leadership skills and leaders who are skilled managers.
Leader – Leader can be defined as someone who has a good vision to achieve a goal and
can influence subordinates towards maximising their efforts to realise that good vision. Leaders
use social influence not some coercion to lead, not direct.
Role of a leader Set up organisational structure – It is the most important role of leader to set
organisational structure and objectives and also, to organise resources that would be
required to achieve those targets. It is the leadership to Uber i.e. its CEO and other
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members of the Board who are responsible to develop and organise organisational
structure, command chain, communication channels that makes basis for its
organisational culture.
 Strategist – It is also one of the most important role that a leader has to play i.e. devising
a strategy that the organisation would implement to achieve organisational targets that
have been set earlier. Uber leadership develops flexible strategies in alignment with the
market situations to achieve targets and empower growth of the company.
Characteristics of a leader Enlightened – A leader always have a clear mind to know what their specific focus shall
be in prevalent situation for they are the one who are responsible to implement vision and
objectives of the company (Furtner and Baldegger, 2016). Leadership of Uber lays down
clear goals and develops clear strategy for the employees to provide them clear
instructions as to how they are supposed to carry out organisational objectives.
 Strong decision-making power – Leaders are responsible for taking big and most
important decisions in an organisation that can make or break it even. It were the wrong
decisions of the earlier leadership of Uber that had developed toxic organisational culture
which was improved by correct decisions of the new Board and CEO.
Manager – Manager can be defined as someone who is entrusted to manage a company or
its some function. Managers are generally those persons who are responsible to carry out
functions of management such as planning, organising, staffing, controlling, etc.
Role of a manager Link between subordinates and senior management – A manager is responsible to
provide information about senior management decisions to its subordinates and to inform
subordinates issues and activities to senior leadership. In Uber's organisational culture,
managers play an active role as mediator to keeps the organisational culture healthy.
 Supervision - It is the responsibility of manager to make others perform activities that are
required for achieving organisational objectives (Harel, Schwartz and Kaufmann, 2020).
Managers of Uber play a supervising role that their subordinates are performing their role
in a correct manner in such a way that it provides employees a developmental
opportunity as well.
Characteristics of a manager
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