Leadership and Management: Roles, Theories, and Applications

This report delves into the critical aspects of leadership and management within an organizational context, using Marks & Spencer as a case study. It begins by differentiating between the roles of leaders and managers, highlighting their distinct characteristics and responsibilities, such as relationship building versus system building, and vision creation versus goal achievement. The report then explores various leadership styles, including democratic and autocratic approaches, alongside the importance of hard and soft management skills. Furthermore, it examines the roles of leaders and functions of managers in diverse situations, emphasizing planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. The report also explains different leadership theories and models, such as situational leadership, system leadership, and contingency theory, and their application within the organization. The conclusion emphasizes the crucial role of effective leadership and management in enhancing employee performance, achieving business objectives, and driving overall productivity and profitability. The report includes references to relevant academic sources.

Management and
Operation

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
LO1..................................................................................................................................................1
P1 Explain different role of leader and characteristic of a manager............................................1
LO2..................................................................................................................................................2
P2 Role of leader and function of manager in different situations..............................................2
P3 Explain different theories and model of approach..................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Management and operation is the process where manager or leader of the organisation
manage whole activities and functions of the production (Ansoff and et.al., 2018). It include the
controlling and redesigning the whole structure for the manufacturing of products and services.
To be understand this concept this report chosen Marks & Spencer organisation which is British
multinational retail company who specialist in selling cloths and home products. This report
include the role or leader and characteristics of manager and how they perform their duty in
different situation. In addition, manager follow various theories, concepts approaches.
MAIN BODY
LO1
P1 Explain different role of leader and characteristic of a manager
Leader is the one who holds a dominant position in an organisation and is able to exercise
a control over other. A manager is a person who is responsible for administering or controlling
an organisation or group of staff.
BASIS LEADER MANAGER
Role
 Relationship builder: Leader
build loyalty and trust among
other people in order to build a
strong relationship among the
people.
 Coach: Leader will only guide
about what actually the work is.
 System builder: Manager
focus on the structures
which are necessary to set
and achieve goals.
 Direct: Manager assign task
and provide knowledge
about how to accomplish it.
Characteristics
 Creates Vision: Leaders create
a vision by thinking beyond the
individual and encourage other
member to be a part of
 Creates goal: Manager
focus on measuring and
achieving goals.

something bigger (Kauppi,
2013).
 Risk taker: Leaders take risk of
new thing as they know this is
one of the step to attain success.
 Risk controller: Managers
works to minimize the risk
as they control the problem.
Leadership styles- There are different type of leadership styles such as democratic leadership,
autocratic leadership, Laissez Faire leadership and others. Some of the are defined as following:
Democratic leadership style- It another style of leadership which is also known as participative
leadership style. Within this leadership style, the team members and staff people is allow to
make participation in decision making process and share their ideas and views to the leader.
Autocratic leadership style- It is a type of leadership style. Under this style, the leader of the
organisation is the only person who is responsible to take decision. There are no other
individuals who suggest to the person.
Hard management skill- These kind of management skills indicates to those skills which are
teachable and measurable abilities like writing, reading, math and ability to utilize computer
programs. Hard skills of management consist various skills like communication skill,
management skill, accounting, finance, legal and other quantifiable skills.
Soft leadership skill- It refers to those skills which are used by the leader of the firm to manage
the team, solving their issues and provide guidance to them. Teamwork, decision making,
problem solving, communication, motivation and others are some soft leadership skills.
LO2
P2 Role of leader and function of manager in different situations
The main role of leader in an organisation is to represent an organisation as he has to
represent at seminars, conferences and general meeting. Leaders creates vision and shared values
and leads to bring change in the organisation if required. It also encourage teamwork by
involving everyone and and bringing best among the people and encourage group decision
(Rosemann and vom Brocke, 2015). For example at the time of monthly target in Marks and
Spencer leader encourage every team member and also motivate them for group decision and
guide them properly to achieve the target easily and timely.

For example, there is a conflict between the members of Marks and Spencer at the time
of implementation of new project (at the time of its international expansion, M&S moved
without proper investigation and planning which leads to its failure as it import all its production
related material through home country which is very expensive and result in financial failure ).
At this time manager will follow some of the function which will help the company to overcome
with the issue.
Following are the functions followed by the manager in an organisation:
 Planning: This is the first basic function of management. Planning is deciding in
advance what to do, when to do and how to do. The manager here is required to plan the
schedule and give the blueprint of how the task will be done. In context to above
situation, manager is required to make plan of how new project in to be implemented so
that above issue can be resolved.
 Organizing: It is the process of bringing together physical, financial and human
resources and developing relationship among them to achieve organisational goal. Here
manager need to some up all the things and check whether everything is according to the
plan or not. In context to above situation manager will organise raw material,information
about other country, staff required for new project and other things for the completion of
project.
 Staffing: Staffing means grouping of people into different team and allotting different
task to them. The main purpose of staffing is to put right person on right job. As
discussed above there was conflict, so manager should assign the people into different
teams or group so that conflicts didn't arose between the thinking of people.
 Directing: It is that part of managerial function which help the organisation to work
efficiently for achieving organisational purpose. It directly deals with influencing,
guiding, supervising, motivating for the achievement. In context to above situation
manager will motivate each employee for profitability and together will build a team
resolves the issue among them.
 Controlling: Controlling is the process of measuring and correcting the performance
activities of subordinates in order to make sure that the enterprise objectives and plans are
accomplished. Every activities of the organisation should be under control of the

manager. From the above context manager will establish a proper standard and will
measure the actual performance of the employees (tarr and Van Wassenhove, 2014).
P3 Explain different theories and model of approach
Situational Leadership: This model was created by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard
which works on the assumption that style of leadership changes from situation to situation. To be
successful, Marks and Spencer can adapt this style and approach to diverse circumstances.
System Leadership: This leadership enables the leaders in the organisation to create the
condition where people of all levels can work productively to their potential. It create models of
good leadership, organisational strategy, system design and social process. It provides leader
with the tools that helps them to predict the behaviour of people in the organisation.
Contingency theory of Leadership: It states that there is no single best way to structure
the organisation and lead a team. It examine how best one can run the organisation in the
different situations. Leadership depends on following factors namely the leaders chosen goal,
followers expectation, complexity of organisation and certainty and uncertainty of task.
Marks and Spencer uses System leadership as it enables to adapt the need of environment
and help in achieving the individual as well as overall goals of the organisation. It also will help
the company to predict people's behaviour in the organisation and also help to build effective
system.
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it has been concluded that manager or leader plays very
important role by using various leadership style or approaches. Leadership help the leaders or
manager to identify their employees performance and motivate them to achieve their business
goals & objectives. It will further help the manager to increase their productivity and
profitability.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Ansoff, H. I ., and et.al., 2018. Implanting strategic management. Springer.
Kauppi, K., 2013. Extending the use of institutional theory in operations and supply chain
management research: Review and research suggestions. International Journal of
Operations & Production Management. 33(10). pp.1318-1345.
Rosemann, M. and vom Brocke, J., 2015. The six core elements of business process
management. In Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122). Springer,
Berlin, Heidelberg.
Starr, M. K. and Van Wassenhove, L. N., 2014. Introduction to the special issue on humanitarian
operations and crisis management. Production and Operations Management. 23(6).
pp.925-937.