Management and Operations: Leaders, Managers, and Theories

This report provides a comprehensive overview of management and operations, differentiating between the roles of leaders and managers within an organization. It explores key management functions such as planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling. The report delves into various management theories, including classical, behavioral, and contingency theories, along with situational and system leadership theories. It also examines transformational, transactional, and action-centered leadership models, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of both leadership and management in organizational success, underscoring their distinct but complementary roles in decision-making and enhancing productivity. The report references several scholarly articles to support its analysis.

Management and operations

Introduction
 The management & operations are defined as the way in which
different activities and tasks of the company are done effectively.
Different companies and organisation have their own mission and
vision.
 There are various departments including marketing, production,
finance, etc. There are different role of leaders and functions of
managers that helps an organisation to succeed in attaining
organisational goals and objectives.

Differentiate between the role of leader and
function of manager
Basis Managers Leaders
Role
Managers are responsible for doing
various operations like planning,
staffing, directing, etc.
Leader is an individual who is
responsible for guiding and making way
for performing actions in an effective
manner.
Risk taking
Managers are defined as risk avoiders.
They perform the tasks and business
activities in effective manner.
Leaders are risk takers and they perform
business activities effectively.
Opportunity to employees
Managers only provide guidance to
employees and they do not set goals for
employees (Barratt, Choi, and Li,
2011).
Leaders listen to new innovative ideas
and thoughts of employees.
Resistance to change
Managers of M&S resist to set
benchmarks and standards.
Leaders are responsible for promoting
changes within organisation.

Management functions
 Planning:- It refers to deciding in advance the future course of action
for accomplishing the goals and objective of a company effectively.
 Organising:- It is defined as grouping the activities which is to be
performed for the execution of particular task and establishing authority
as well as relationship among them.
 Commanding:- Managers of M&S guides their workforce for
providing better performance.

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 Coordinating:- Managers of Mark & Spencer keep on coordinating
team actions and procedures for ensuring that the organisational goals
can be achieve effectively and efficiently.
 Controlling:- It refers to evaluating that all the operations are
performed as per the planned schedule and if there is gap between
planned and actual performance then finding and controlling those
factors.

Management theory
 Classical theory – The classical theory of management is based on
beliefs of workers i.e. they have only economic and physical needs
 Behavioural theory – This is also known as human relation movement
as this theory focuses on understanding human behaviour at workplace.

Contingency theory
 Contingency theory – This is an approach
of management which is based on
effectiveness of contingent and application
of management behaviours and specific
situations. This means managers change
their way of solving business issues on the
basis of circumstances.

Situational leadership theory
Strength weakness
 This theory is helpful for leaders in
handling various organisation situations.
 Situational theory helps in development
of relation among leaders and managers
with employees and subordinates.
 Under this approach, managers and
leaders focuses on long term goals of the
company.
 This theory sometimes considers as not
much intuitive toward task achievement.

System leadership theory
Strength Weakness
 This theory is helpful for adapting the
business scenario and environment
(Chiarini, and Vagnoni, 2015).
 By using this type of leadership
approach, a leader is able to integrate
various elements for accomplishing
organisational goals.
 System theory is not always applicable to
each and every business situation.
 It includes various dimensions of
management and leads to delay in process
of decision making.

Contingencies leadership theory
Strength Weakness
 This leadership style provides data which
helps in development of leadership
profile for planing of human resource.
 This is a predictive model as it leads to
solve every business situation.
 This theory is hard and complex ans thus
it is not easy to implement it in
organisation.

Transformational and transactional leadership
 The transformational leadership emphasises on enhancing employee
motivation and employee involvement within the organisation.
 According to this type of leadership style, the leaders must do
extraordinary work so that they can become ideal for their employees.

Action centred leadership
 According to this leadership model, there are three core
responsibilities of management like managing the task,
managing the team or group and managing individuals.
These steps are explained below -
 Managerial responsibilities – The task
 Managerial responsibilities – The group
 Managerial responsibilities – The individuals
 Hard management skills and soft management skills

Conclusion
 From the above discussion, it is analysed that management and
operations is an essential activity that is important factor is success of
any organisation.
 The role of manager and leader within a company is different but they
both are essential for making important decisions in order to increase
the productivity and effectiveness of the company.

References
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.
Barratt, M., Choi, T. Y. and Li, M., 2011. Qualitative case studies in operations management:
Trends, research outcomes, and future research implications. Journal of Operations
Management. 29(4). pp.329-342.
Brandon, C. J. and Mullan, P. B., 2013. Teaching medical management and operations
engineering for systems-based practice to radiology residents. Academic radiology. 20(3).
pp.345-350.