Leadership, Management, and Operational Strategies at Toyota: A Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Toyota's management and leadership practices. It begins with an introduction to the company's organizational structure, highlighting its evolution and key departments. The report then defines the roles of managers and leaders, contrasting their responsibilities and emphasizing the differences between management and leadership. It explores various leadership approaches, including contingency, situational, and systematic leadership, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses within the context of Toyota's operations. The report also examines the impact of internal and external business environment factors on decision-making and suggests improvements for enhancing operational efficiency to meet business objectives. Finally, it concludes by recommending strategies for future improvements in management and leadership within Toyota, emphasizing the importance of skilled managers and risk-taking leaders.

Management &
Operation

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
1. Introduction to the organisation and its management structure..............................................1
2. Definition and roles of both managers and leaders, highlighting the difference between
management and leadership........................................................................................................2
3. Different roles of management and leadership in application to different organisational......3
4. Explaining the strength and weaknesses of different approaches to leadership and
management in order to supported by theories and leadership...................................................4
5. Conclusion on how managers and leaders impact on the organisation and recommendation
for future......................................................................................................................................5
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................6
1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................6
2. Define key operational functions, or also identifying functions.............................................6
3. Key Operational approaches to operations to operations management and their value..........7
4. An evaluation of the impact of external business environment factors that directly decision
making by leaders and managers................................................................................................8
5. How operational efficiency can be improved to successfully meet business objectives by
using appropriate management and leadership approaches. ......................................................9
6. Conclusions by recommend for future improvements to be taken by the organisation. ........9
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Management and operation is an area of management that operate business activities,
controlling the process of production and redesigning business operation in the production of
goods and services. The main aim of this department is to make sure the efficiency level of the
production in order to full fill the client needs and wants. Present study based on Management
operation of Toyota which is Japanese car manufacturer company based on Japan.
Present report will discuss about the company management structure and roles and
responsibilities of managers or leaders supported by different theories and styles. Therefore,
study also presenting the role or challenge of leadership approaches to leadership and
management goals to the company. Furthermore, in this next segment, research will evaluate
impact of external or internal business environment factors that affect the company decision
making approach.
TASK 1
1. Introduction to the organisation and its management structure.
Company overview (Toyota)
Toyota is the multinational car manufacturer company which deals with motor vehicles
and parts. Toyota also operates in automotive operations, financial services and others.
Automotive operations manufacture, sells passenger cars, and sell other accessories. On the other
segment company offers purchase or lease financing to Toyota Vehicle dealers and customers
(Andrade, Mendes and Lourenço, 2017). Toyota also provides lease contracts for leasing retail,
and other segments deals with design, manufacturing
Management Structure
Management structure of the company praise as the most productive and efficiently
working which creates innovative and creative models for the clients. Company maintained the
quality life of the product in order to meet out the customer satisfaction approach. Company
change its organisation structure in April 2017 In order to alter quality more enhanced and boost
business profitability ratio.
Toyota adopt the concept of product based rather than function-based organisation.
Company adopts EV planning Department which refers in-house venture, that responsible for
company planning and developing electric vehicles (Bligh, 2017). In last December, Toyota also
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established Emerging market Compact Car company in order to build in house company for
compact vehicles and launch it into emerging competitive market.
Toyota Company structure follows customer first, Quality first on the other side,
Company organisation structure based on traditional Japanese business hierarchy model where
all the decision taken by the senior top management staff (Business Case Study: Toyota;s
Organisational Structure, 2019). They follow centralised decision-making process that followed
by middle or lower level staff.
For example: All Company (Toyota) offices are controlled by head office department
which is situated in Japan in order to support or maintained the company strategic planning and
maintained board of director trusts and support.
2. Definition and roles of both managers and leaders, highlighting the difference between
management and leadership.
Leaders: Leader is the person or individual has power to coordinate or support number
people or group in an effective manner. Leader is innovative, creative, risk taker, decision maker,
confident, or a good human being. In an organisation perspective leader who lead a team and
provide guidance to employees towards the correct path that achieve company objectives
(Maurer and London, 2018).
Managers: Manager is the person who appointed by the company for the position of
manager to follows the company structure policy (Bolman and Deal, 2017). Manager has to
follows code of conduct and previously followed structure. Manager has lots of responsibility to
accomplish task on time.
Roles of Managers
Manager role is to convey the task to all employees. General managers is responsible for
taking care to overall company functions. Departmental manager is responsible to ensure specific
department functioning and growth. Project manager is responsible to ensure the particular
projects which handle by the company. PM mainly accountable for its running projects and guide
to their subordinates. Other roles of manager is to guide employees, monitoring the process of
implementation, solve the query of employees in order to ensure the best developing result and
growth (Esparcia, Escribano and Serrano, 2015).
Roles of Leaders
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Leaders is the action-oriented person who always stands for employee safety. Leaders are
the risk taker who take sudden action in order to accomplish the employee personal morale. The
foremost role of leader is to motivate Toyota employees towards the high-quality work
performance. Building employee morale and friendly atmosphere at workplace is another
significant role of leaders.
Difference between management and Leadership
Basis Leadership Management
Concept Leadership is a skill which based on
trust
Management is systematic
organisation structure which based on
Control.
Power Leadership has power to influence
employees towards company profit.
Management has power of code of
conduct made by the company.
Focus Leadership mainly focuses on
encouraging or motivating employees
in Toyota.
Management is more focused on
bringing Stability and increasing
profitability of the organisation.
Formulation Leadership focuses on formulation of
teams and employee unions but they
follow policies developed by the
management within Toyota (Clinton,
2018).
On the other hand, Management
strictly follows Policies and
Procedures developed the managers or
board of directors within the
organisation.
Role Role of manager is to develop
standards as well as business plans
and strategies.
Role of leader is to ensure that all the
standards are being followed by
followers.
3. Different roles of management and leadership in application to different organisational.
Contingency Leadership: Contingency leadership theory gives importance to leadership
on matching a leader style to right situation. This theory given by Fiedler after evaluating
different approaches and goals. According to this theory of leadership assumes that behaviour
cannot be influenced or modified. For example: In case of pressure or work load, leader is on the
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position who need to motivate their employees in order to gain productivity to the followers. The
main role of leadership approach is to make good relationship and create trust among employees.
Leader responsible for making relation, guide task structure or leader positive power. On
the other hand, the role of manager in this approach is to manage or guide employees (Mone,
and London, 2018). The biggest strength of leadership approach is that it helps an enterprise in
maintaining flexibility. It has broadened the scope of leadership. Major weakness of
contingency leadership approach is that it is complex to be implemented.
Situational Leadership: This approach of leadership and management is defining the
critical situation on that basis manager or leaders needs to make decisions. This is the repeatable
framework for leaders to make the decision as per the performance. This leadership approach is
based on relationship between leader and followers works within the company environment. In
this approach manager role is to follows the company set structure, and on the other hand. Leader
always take decision as per the benefits of employees and motivate employees to adopt new
changes. This approach is based on two terms first leadership style and the behaviour of
individual level. The main strength of situational leadership is that it enable greater flexibility at
workplace. Weakness of this leadership approach is that it is ineffectiove in context of task
oriented environment.
Systematic Leadership: This leadership or management approach clearly refers to the
system which followed by the company. This systematic leadership approach based on the
company functions and growth (Northouse, 2018). In this situation, leader needs to motivate
employees to adopt their roles of responsibilities in an effective manner.
Classical management theory – This theory is based on the belief that employees have
two needs which are Physical and Economical. It does not consider job satisfaction and social
needs, it rather focuses on centralised decision making and leadership, specialisation of labour as
well as profit maximisation. For example – Toyota provides good incentives and bonuses to their
employees. The company also offers insurance to their employees for their protection.
Behaviour management theory – This theory of management was developed in
response to the need related to employee motivation and behaviour. This shift in the needs
moved management from a production orientation to a leadership style focused on the
employee’s human need for work related satisfaction and good working conditions. For example
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– Toyota focuses on providing effective training programs for their employees to improve their
skills. It also contributes in their future development.
4. Explaining the strength and weaknesses of different approaches to leadership and management
in order to supported by theories and leadership.
Strength & weaknesses of contingency approach
 This is the most authenticated approach of leadership and management.
 This is the predictive model which well-defined model to identify LPC and situations.
 This approach promotes employees towards fulfilling the leaders to task instead of
expectations from a leader.
 This theory is manageable and effective at the time of new management change within
the company atmosphere.
Weaknesses
 This model fails to deliver the effectiveness of leadership in various situations. This leadership approach fails to prove the relationship of a subordinated upon own
leadership style.
Strength & weaknesses of Systematic approach
Strength
 This model of systematic approach is easy to execute and understand as per the survey.
 This approach also helps to provides researchers and statistics with a degree of control
and sense of process.
 Clustered selection Eliminated
 Low Risk Factor.
Weaknesses
 It creates pressure on leaders to manage the positive and negative employee’s behaviour. Its provide less flexibility.
Strength & weaknesses of Situational approach
Strength
 In this situational approach can help employees to give training and give time to adopt
the new changes
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 In this manager or leader allows employees how to work or how to approach the new
task.
Weaknesses
 it is difficult for managers to adopt and manage work in systematic approach. Individual
struggles from uncertain situations.
5. Conclusion on how managers and leaders impact on the organisation and recommendation for
future.
Managers and leaders both are the most important element for the big multinational
companies. Good leaders and their adopted approaches have been given positive impact on the
employees satisfaction. On the other hand, positive support from manager can make employees
more productive to accomplish the professional standard (Shujahat and et.al., 2017). Both leaders
and managers play their own importance. Manager or leader can improve employee’s
productivity, reduce employee turnover, adopt new changes, enhance profitability growth and
maintained customer satisfaction as well. They both responsible for different functional
departmental goals. Overall, this perform has been given positive impact on the business success.
Recommendation for future.
Toyota requires most talented and creative manager and leader who holds the company
certain situation. Also, Company needs to hire high professional or skilled managers who have a
knowledge of management principles or approaches. On the other hand, Company also need to
hire good self-confident and risk taker kind of leaders to make the effective decision for the
company (Staats, 2016).
TASK 2
1. Introduction
Key activities performed by manager in Toyota is formulation of business plans as well as
strategies. Other role of manager includes establishment of standards for procedures etc. It is the
key activity of manger in Toyota to make important business decision.
Key Operations to the decision-making process is to explore the quality management file.
Toyota addresses their all operational functional department and goals. The main functional
department of the operation management is to explore the effective management task in order to
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accomplish the overall quality performance and goals. There are various areas of operation
function of Toyota that are given below:
Design of goods and services: In order to design effective area development goals will
help to make effective developing area. Toyota adopts different new kinds of technology and
growth, that helps to control the effective management goals and long-term goals process.
Toyota uses its R&D investments to ensure and produce more effective leading growth and
effective learning task (Jin, Luo and Wan, 2018).
Quality management: this is another operations function that helps company to enhance
their product quality and learning effective goals. Apart from that, firm addresses specific areas
for further effective and developing areas. In order to beat the long-term goals and effective
efforts.
Location strategy: It is the another regional, global, local strategies for example: in
order to handle different operational location of the company. For that Toyota has adopts mixed
set of strategies to make all things more effectively working and productive.
2. Define key operational functions, or also identifying functions.
Operation department is the most effective and leading functional area that ensure overall
functional unit of the company. Operation department is managing the process within the
organisation that effectively work and achieve the goals into more efficient manner. There are
given some management operation functions given to express in more detailed manner.
Finance: Finance operation function is responsible to handle chief position in the
company. It has been utilized the functional area in order to carry out major functions such as the
creation of goods or services so that it helps to ensure the more leading effective goals. Manager
need to maintained the list of financial sources in order to manage or fulfil another requirement
(Otley, 2016).
Operation: Operation is the most crucial department within the company that handle day
to day activities of the company in order to build long term goals and objectives. This functional
area is more concerned for effective planning, organising, directing and controlling all the
activities into more efficient manner. In this key operational function, manager needs to
performed, that is to ensure day to day task, monitoring subordinate works.
Strategy: Strategy is operation management, which refers to planning tactics that could
help them to optimise the resources into more effective manner. In order to apply the business
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management strategies into the business function in terms of applying supply chain
configuration, sales, capacity to hold money, optimum utilisation of human resources and many
more (Pushpakumara, 2015.
Forecasting: Forecasting is the method or approach to estimate certain events that might
occur in the future. In order to gain future gains, which includes forecasting in estimating
customer demand so that company make functions accordingly.
3. Key Operational approaches to operations to operations management and their value.
In order to maintained the company operation effective, Toyota needs to focused on some
measure operational approachable tools. To keep operation approaches more productive and
leading company has to adopt some following approaches of management to keep customer
satisfaction more approachable.
Total quality management: This management approach is based on the principle that each and
every member of the staff should be committed towards maintaining high standards of work in
each and every aspect of Toyota’s business activities or operations. The main focus of this
approach is to improve the quality of the outputs of companies such as Toyota, including its
vehicles or services through continuous feedbacks. Toyota can use this approach by improving
the quality of their cars, such as focusing on production activities or customer care team by
collecting feedbacks from their customers. TQM is the most effective approach that ensure the
quality and team performance that will meet the customer expectations. TQM also consist some
vital approaches that TOYOTA can adopt into their operation functions such as Just in time,
Statistical process control, total prevention maintenance etc. In context of TQM it has helped an
organisation in bringing improvement in quality. It has aidded firm in reducing the costs of
production.
(Vecchio, 2017).
Lean management: Lean management is an approach of running a company or organisation that
supports the concept of continuous improvement, a long-term approach to work that focuses on
achieving small changes in processed systematically. The main objective of Lean management is
to create value to the customer by optimising resources (Abdallah, Dahiyat and Matsui, 2018).
Lean Management is the crucial concept to keep maintained the quality level of the Toyota’s
functional areas. The concept of Lean management, it is an ongoing process or goals that affect
the managing work place environment. Lean management improves the quality of product
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services, processes which require incremental or also improves customer satisfaction. Lean
management seeks to eliminate waste of time or activities in order to full customer’s demand and
needs. In context of TQM, this approach has assisted Toyota in eliminating the defects from
products.
Six Sigma: Six sigma is a statistical based, disciplined, data driven and continues improvement
approach that helps to eliminate any defects in a product, service or process. It basically consists
of Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control. Six Sigma is another major issue that affect
the overall operation department goals in Toyota in order to meet out the effective working
performance. Sigma is the disciplined, Statistical based data driven approach that easily contains
long term goals and effective leading management task. The six-sigma approach can help Toyota
in avoiding any defects in their automobiles to improve customer satisfaction. m
4. An evaluation of the impact of external business environment factors that directly decision
making by leaders and managers.
External factors have always influenced company decision making approach taking by
manager and leaders. External forces directly affect company functional activities to get
influenced by political, legal, political or social factors. There are some external or internal factor
that affect business internal factor. Overall, there are given some factors given below to
introduce new managing task.
Employee Roles: Employees are the factor that affect company internal performance.
Employee performance and support helps Toyota to maintained customer satisfaction.
Employees have varying levels of maturity in approaching task and relationship in an effective
manner. This overall factors or employee issues create challenges for the leaderships
management task (Hitt, Xu, and Carnes, 2016).
Sociological factors: This is another external factor that affect internal company
environment in different aspects. Apart from that, it discovers the new managing effective
goals. Sociological approach helps to manage the effective leadership styles and goals in order to
meet out the social needs and goals. For that, leaders need to understand social factors such as
demographic makeup and cultures of the clients of Toyota.
Economic and political factors: leaders must educate themselves about the new
regulations or policies through which they can easily implement sudden changes in the
management goals. These factors create critical situation for the company leaders.
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Technology: Technology is another external force that drives new changes for leaders and
managers. Leader’s also needs to adjust research development and help leaders to create
innovation and adopts new techniques that make operational activities more smoothly and
effective (Otley, 2016).
Environmental factors: Environmental factor is another feature that influence leadership
decision making approach. This factor affected by ecological concern if leader or managers fails
to adopt those environmental strategies.
Corporate culture, Values and ethics – The organisational culture, values and ethics also
plays an important role in decision making within a company. For example – If there is a good
working environment and culture within the organisation employees feels comfortable in sharing
their views which is helpful in decision making. On the other ethics and values helps the leaders
or managers to work in coordination with the staff members.
5. How operational efficiency can be improved to successfully meet business objectives by using
appropriate management and leadership approaches.
Leadership approaches is the long-term effect that affect the long-lasting relationship on
the overall development process. Every organisation required effective leadership in order to
motivate their employees into more effective manner. Apart from that, it discovers the long-term
approach and make effective leadership style.
Leadership and management approaches:
Qualities or traits Approach: Leaders are born not made is the assessment of leading
goals. Leaders are most innovative and leading individual personality with having wide skills
and growth. This approach helps leaders to manage employee performance more effectively
done and growing (Pushpakumara, 2015). Overall leadership give good impact on the company
objectives and goals.
Functional or Group Approach: Leaderships can be learned or developed by the
leaders with applying new effective traits and goals. That helps leaders to adopt different other
kinds of leadership goals and company effective working performance.
6. Conclusions by recommendation for future improvements to be taken by the organisation.
In order to develop Toyota Operations management function or task, it is very much
required for the manager to adopt some extra functional strategies for further growth. In order to
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measure goals accordingly. In order to meet out the company aims and objectives, company
required to meet fast developing results and growth. This helps to meet out the new developing
results and goals (Slack and Brandon-Jones, 2018).
Toyota can make use of developing its design of goods and services. This will help the
organisation to achieve desired growth in increasing proper efficiency. The company can
develop its overall functioning of regional, national and international service provision.
Improvements of these factors would ensure that the organisation satisfying consumer needs as
well. The lean manufacturing could do a lot for Toyota to improve its organisational operations
and its overall functioning. It is one of the best ways to reduce occurring wastage in the
organisation and its environment (Vecchio, 1987).
The next approach that Toyota needs to make use of is developing its production at a rate
where it can easily produce required vehicles without any interruptions and problems. To
achieve, this the organisation can implement Six Sigma approach which can ensure its better
functioning and quality management. Six sigma would help Toyota to develop such efficiency in
its manufacturing that will improve its overall production quality and would make the
organisation achieve its desired goals and objectives. All these measures can make Toyota
improve its operations management and achieve its desired goals successfully(Wang and Li,
2016). Along with it, these improvements will ensure proper growth and development of the
organisation and would help it achieves required profitability from its selling of products and
services.
CONCLUSION
As per the above report it has been analysed that management operation is the long-
lasting process that affect directly to the performance of business. Study has been discussed
about management operation approaches and methods to make functional growth of the business.
Therefore, it also has been analysed or discussed about the role of management and leaders in
order to maintained the company success. In spite of that, report discussed several leaders and
management approaches to get workplace more productive. Overall, study presented different
facts and figures in order to improve the operation managements.
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Online
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