BTEC HND Unit 4: Management and Operations Report Analysis

This report delves into the core concepts of leadership and management, exploring the distinctions between leaders and managers, and examining their respective roles and functions within organizations. The report analyzes leadership approaches and their application, using British Airways as a case study to assess their impact on the airline's current business situation. Furthermore, it presents an overview of operations management for Brakes, a retail grocery store in the UK, discussing different approaches to operations management and their significance in meeting business objectives. The report also highlights the factors influencing operations management within organizations and their effects on business operations. The report includes detailed tables, figures, and analyses to support its findings and conclusions, offering a comprehensive understanding of the key topics covered.

Management and
Operations

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1 Functions and features of Leaders and Managers..................................................................1
M1 Leadership and management & their concepts and theories.................................................2
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................4
P2 Roles and functions of leaders and managers in situational contexts....................................4
P3 Models and theories of approaches........................................................................................6
M2 Strengths and weaknesses of approaches..............................................................................8
D1................................................................................................................................................9
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................9
P4 Approaches to operations management for Brakes................................................................9
P5 Importance and value of OM to meet business objectives...................................................11
M3Importance of managers and leaders in improving OM.......................................................12
TASK 4..........................................................................................................................................12
P6 The factors of business environment that impacts OM decision making............................12
M4 Impacts of different factors on OM.....................................................................................13
D2..............................................................................................................................................14
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................15

INTRODUCTION
Leaders create visions for their followers and managers align vision with organisational
strategy to push their subordinates towards the corporate strategy. In this context the report will
highlight differences in leadership and management. Also, the report will present application of
leadership approaches to British Airways by critical analyses of their impacts on current
business’s situation. BA is the airline company in Britain. In addition the report will present
operation management for Brakes group a retail grocery store in UK. Thus, different approaches
to OM and its importance to them will be included in the report. Also, it will highlight factors
affecting OM in the organisation and their impacts on store.
TASK 1
P1 Functions and features of Leaders and Managers
Management and leadership are two terms that are used simultaneously within business
functions. Leaders are influencers and managers are implementers. It can be said that they
ensures smooth functioning of business to achieve common business goal by exercising their
unique powers and roles (Hewison and Holden, 2016).
Functions/Roles of Leaders in British Airways
Envisioning: Leaders visualize the admiring clients’ glances of the business by imagining future
possibilities and impossibilities.
Influencing: They influence behaviours of people by articulating rules and regulation without
modifying values and motivations (Sowcik et.al., 2015).
Goal-setting: They establish measurable goals by identifying change and required change in
business to accomplish vision into reality.
Function/Roles of Managers in British Airways
Planner: Managers plan for their teams by making plans and defining gaols for future direction
based on vision of the organisation.
1

Monitor: Managers are information hub and creates management plan by monitoring team work
activities and manage them more effectively.
Allocator: Allocation of resources and duties by managers to their subordinates generates
additional revenues (Kyambalesa, 2019). Also, they take significant decisions for them regarding
any issues and problems arising in organisation.
Features of Leaders in British Airways
Inspiring: To become successful leaders it is necessary for BA’s leaders to inspire their team
towards visions through their actions and encourage employee commitment and engagement.
Positivity: It is the quality of leaders who excel even in pressure by aligning business strategy to
drive higher levels of performance across the organisation.
Creativity: Creative style of leadership is cooperative leaders with innovative and brilliant skills
rather than safe plodders (Khalili, 2017.).
Features of Managers in British Airways
Leadership: An effective manager is good leader who can lead the team towards right direction
in efficient manner.
Time management: TM is essential as there are lot of responsibilities on the head of managers
and they create an example for employees to manage their professional lives.
Reliability: To lead the team managers have to be reliable that means a supporting superior for
the team in any situation (Situmorang and Japutra, 2019).
M1 Leadership and management & their concepts and theories
British Airways is a company operating in service industry. Thus, they have skilled managers
and leaders to manage business operations. To differentiate between leaders and managers a
tubular representation is presented below.
2

Table 1: Comparing managers and leaders
Leaders Managers
 They Focus on business people
 Innovators
 Inspires their people
 Long range perspectives (Algahtani,
2014)
 Align people
 Articulates vision
 They focus on business systems
 Analytical
 Relies on controls
 Short range views
 Staff and organize people
 Execute goals set by leaders
Concepts and theories
Concept of Management theory denotes the ways managers employ their knowledge and skills in
implementation of goals and motivate team to perform at highest standard. Moreover, concept of
leadership defines the process of applying leadership attributes to direct the organisation to
accomplish organisational objective (Morden, 2017). Attributes are beliefs, values, ethics, and
skills and so on.
Transactional Theory of leadership: The most persuaded theory of leadership that says that
leaders define rewards and punishments for the group to perform at exceptional level. Also,
leaders motivate their followers by communicating their self-interests (Afshari and Gibson,
2016). Thus, the theory is based on three concepts i.e. organising, controlling and short-term
planning to ensure positive changes in quick manner.
Contingency Management Theory: This is the theory of management that describes that the
management is dependent and contingent according to the application and behaviours in specific
situations. Thus, it cannot be assured that single management approach is best (Berry, Broadbent
and Otley, 2019). However, to effectively manage the business functions the organisation must
tailor their planning, organizing, leading, and controlling to their particular circumstances.
Hard management skills and soft leadership skills
3

Practical understanding including specific knowledge and abilities of leaders and managers that
are sturdy and firm are known as Hard Skills. On the contrary, Soft skills are personal attributes
that covers cooperation, humaneness, logical thinking, work ethics, interpersonal skills and
integrity etc. However, certain hard skills are specifically required by job applicants for some
managerial positions to be chosen with a few particular soft skills (Rao, 2016). To effectively
manage business operations both hard and soft skills are essential for leaders and managers. As
well, a person can be elevated in business by valuable soft skill that fit to position in absence of
required hard skill.
TASK 2
P2 Roles and functions of leaders and managers
Leadership and Management are most essential elements of business functions. An organised
group working towards same goal is a consequent of efficient leadership and management. Being
a big corporate British Airways is facing challenges of strikes, It failure and customer unrest in
industry from external environment including competitors and clients (Guardian News & Media
Limited, 2019). Major functions of leadership and management are planning, organising,
directing, leading, coordinating and controlling.
Functions of Leadership and Management
Figure 1: Functions of Management
(Source: Open learn, 2019)
4

Planning and Forecasting: It is step of mapping out the steps of achieving the organisational
goals. In given contexts British Airways is facing challenges like unrest customers and IT failure
that are major issue for the organisation. Thus, planning involves determining best course of
action to achieve prioritised goals to minimise the impacts of those challenges and turn them into
acquiescence (Fayol, 2016).
Organising: After the goal-setting is done, the managers have to organise their teammates
according to the plan. Thus, duties are assigned to followers and subordinates by synchronising
them as per mapped ideas. If there is any lacking or issues the managers has to look upon them
and rearticulate.
Staffing: It is function of grouping teammates by allocating tasks to the staff. Moreover, leaders
and managers resolve disputes among personnel of BA to ensure smooth achievement of
organisational goals (Laud, Arevalo and Johnson, 2016). Thus, managers do staffing by
recruiting, training, and developing workers.
Directing/Leading: It is most essential part of leadership and management where they plan and
organise by leading them. Also, leading includes inspiring, communicating, directing, and
encouraging. Thus, leaders and managers guide workers to avoid disputes and do not delay their
jobs.
Coordinating: By creating an efficient team the leaders make them feel comfortable and share
their views generously (Schermerhorn et.al., 2019). Thus, it is essential for leaders and managers
to reconcile interests of employees to ensure voluntary co-operation from them.
Reporting/Controlling: After other functions are placed in right direction managers has to keep
an eye on ongoing tasks. Hence, controlling is continuous function where managers take
corrective actions to minimise negative deviations in by analysing them and reduce chances of
future deviations.
The mentioned organisation has been facing challenges market due to strikes by their employees
and rise in fuel prices is major problem for them. Moreover, services by workers are turning out
to be poor at present and reducing customer base and profit margins. Thus, functions of
managers must be revaluated by them to look upon the lacking in planning and organising.
5

Contract of fuel hedging can be made by the company with oil producers to be certain for some
date range (Liu and Jones, 2016). Moreover, managers may replace striking workers with new
workforce temporarily to ensure uninterrupted functioning.
P3 Models and theories of approaches
Leadership & management is very complex procedure that requires leadership qualities and skills
in order to connect with people and deal with their expectations. With the evolution of leadership
theories and approaches the qualities and behavioural success of leaders are focused upon. Thus,
these theories identify needs and expectations of employees by effective leadership styles for
different circumstances (Lee, 2016). Hence, main approaches of leadership theories are
illustrated here under.
Situational Leadership
The situational leadership theory mentions four main styles of leadership i.e. directing,
supporting, coaching and delegating. Each style is adopted by leaders to manage their group
workers as per different situations and needs of team. Moreover, leaders are able to give
assurance to workers regarding their expectation and duties.
Figure 2: Situational Leadership
6

(Source: Todorov, 2017)
Directing style is adopted by leaders employees have lower competence and higher
commitment directing leaders offer clear set of instructions to them and spend more time
working with them.
Coaching style is leader driven and adopted when followers has developed a little
competence and improved commitment (Browne et.al., 2016). Thus, leaders encourage
team and improve relations with them by spending significant time and efforts.
Supporting style is follower driven approach where they are competent but little less
committed. So, leaders participate with followers to support them to ensure work is
performed at required level.
In this style workers are fully empowered as they have higher competence and
commitment. Also, minimal supervision is required by followers as they are motivated,
empowered and competent enough to perform tasks.
System leadership theory
System theory facilitates managers and leaders to create some levels for their team so that they
can work with complete potential. Also, the approach makes use of sound principles regarding
human behaviour to generate systems design and leadership organisational strategy. By
employing this approach the leaders of BA would be increasing employee productivity after
analysing their behaviours (Jaques, 2017). Also, the discoed theory focuses on creativity and
modernisation in business to accomplish some goal or objective.
Contingency theory
The contingency approach describes that there is no best way to organise a business and perform
decision making. It also defines specific factors those are dependent and independent while
studying organisational behaviour. Independent variables are those that cause changes in
dependent variable and dependent variable are response affected (Bachrach and Mullins, 2019).
Enthusiasm and headship are major independent variables and output, turnover and malingering
are chief dependent variables.
7

M2 Strengths and weaknesses of approaches
Organisational success is dependent upon skills and abilities of leaders where they guide
followers in right direction through efficient procedure. It can be said that every approach or
style adopted by leaders and managers have different objectives and results. Thus, strengths and
weaknesses of each approach are tabulated below.
Situational Leadership
Strengths Weaknesses
 Recognises the need of flexibility
 Allocation of resources is appropriate
 Creative Approach (Muenjohn et.al.,
2018)
 Creates comfortable environment for
employees
 Focused on short term goals rather than
long term needs
 Challenging to define maturity
 Market evaluation is lacking
Systems Leadership
Strengths Weaknesses
 Creates adaptability for environmental
changes
 Decisions are made as per micro and
macro environment
 Dynamic and focus on multiple
dimensions of management
 Not always practical
 Inter-dependence is not clear
 Does not cater to contingencies
Contingency theory
Strengths Weaknesses
 Random issue and variety of solutions
 Effective market research and
innovative approach
 Research is costly (Schedlitzki and
Edwards, 2017)
 Undertrained and unskilled workforce
8

D1
While looking at above study and stated theories and approaches it is evident that organisation
shall adopt situational theory for managing its functions. It is noticeable that the approach is
flexible and easy to follow in different types of situations for different type of employees. Also,
Contingency theories are multifaceted and it is difficult to decide which style shall be suitable.
Another theory suggested is systems leadership and transactional theory of leadership. But,
transactional approach becomes de-motivating for employees due to its punishment system for
employees for performances and rewards for goof performances. It creates sense of partiality is
few employees.
TASK 3
P4 Approaches to operations management for Brakes
Operations management is management practices that create higher efficiency level possible
within organisation. It comprises of scheduling, systematising and supervising processes and
making enhancement for higher probability (Machadoet.al., 2017).In this regards Brakes is a
company dealing in non-specialised wholesale food industry focus on specific goals. They are
aiming on marketing to increase the sales and HR practices to keep their personnel happy. Thus,
major approaches of Operations management are is important because it leads to better output,
competitive advantage and increased revenue. To manage operations of the Grocery Store main
approaches can be Supply chain management (SCM), Business Process management (BPM) and
Kaizen.
BPM
It is the discipline of OM in which numerous techniques are used by managers to examine,
determine, improve, optimise and mechanise business processes. It explains the process of
studying, identifying and monitoring change within organisation to ensure smooth functioning of
the same. Besides, it is one of best techniques of OM that includes structured methods and
procedures (Viriyasitavatet.al., 2018). By employing this approach the organisation would be
capable of making continual improvements through change and improve existing process.
9

Figure 3: Business Process Management
(Source: CM Mitchell Consulting, 2019)
SCM
It is the method of controlling flow of organisational offerings in market including the processes
of converting raw materials into finished products. Besides, it engages active streamlining of
business supply-side activities to exploit competence and customer value (Copacino, 2019).
SXCM activities and strategies are backbone of trade that covers effective market coverage and
making offerings available at various locations to support customer services.
Figure 4: SCM
(Source: Ckradmin, 2018)
10