Management and Operations: Leadership and Manager Roles at Unilever

This report examines leadership and management practices within Unilever, a British transnational consumer goods company. It defines the roles and characteristics of leaders and managers, highlighting their differences and importance in operational activities. The report analyzes various leadership theories, including Contingency Theory and Lewin's leadership styles (autocratic, democratic, and delegative), evaluating their strengths and weaknesses in the context of Unilever's operations. It discusses how leaders and managers handle different situations, such as implementing new technologies, optimizing resource utilization, and increasing revenue. Furthermore, the report emphasizes the importance of aligning employee goals with organizational objectives and adapting leadership styles to specific situations. The report also contains a presentation that covers the importance of operational management and its approaches within Unilever.

Management and Operations

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Activity 1.........................................................................................................................................1
1. Defining leader and manager with their roles and characteristics..........................................1
2. Analysing the role and function of leader and manager in different situation in company....3
3. Analysing and evaluating the different theories and approaches to leadership applying in
Unilever Ltd................................................................................................................................4
Activity 2.........................................................................................................................................7
Enclosed in PPT..........................................................................................................................7
Booklet........................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Operational management can be termed as the process of planning, organising and
supervising the production, manufacturing of the product. It ensures that the organisation
successfully turned its input in output in an efficient manner. The present report will help in
understanding the operational activity and importance of leader and manager in Unilever Ltd., it
is a British transnational consumer goods company. Report will discuss the role and
characteristics of leader and manager by applying different theories. Different leadership theories
and approaches will be discussed. Report will present a presentation which includes the
importance of operational management and its approaches.
Activity 1
1. Defining leader and manager with their roles and characteristics.
Leaders and manager plays an significant role sin every level of organisation. In Unilever
Ltd., leaders and manager both plays an important role in managing the operation activities of
the company. Both leaders and managers works in order to accomplish the desired goals and
target of the organisation, but they have different roles and characteristics which differentiate
them from each other.
Leader:
He can be defined as a person who influences his followers in order to achieve a specific
goals. A leader is someone whoo has clear vision and inspire his followers so that his vision will
become their mission and work in order to achieve it (Renz, 2016). Leader helps the employees
in making strategy in order too achieve the goals. A leader is required al all level of organisation,
he encourages all team in order to accomplish their task and activity.
Manager:
He can be termed as a person who is responsible for managing the activities and
operations of organisation (12 Essential Qualities Of A Manager That Guarantee Success ,
2019). Manager can be referred as the person who exercise his responsibility of planning,
organisation, direction, coordination and control. They are the one who delegates the duties to
their subordinates through several ways and also has the authority to hire the employees. There
are various types of manager that are present at every level or department of organisation such as
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top managers, financial manager, operational manager, general manager etc. the role of these
mangers are depends on their type of work and activities.
The difference between leader and manager are as follows:
Basis of difference Leader Manager
Meaning Leader is a person who influences
and motivates his employees to
achieve the desired goals.
Manager is a person who
organises and manage all the
activities of the organisation.
Method They set direction to work. They make plans and policies.
Subordinates Leaders have followers Managers have employees
Decisions They facilitates the decision so that
employees can effectively follows it.
They make decisions regarding
various activities in
organisation.
Aim The main aim of leader is the growth
and development of organisation.
Managers always aims to
attain the required results.
Focus Leaders always focuses on the needs
of his employees.
Managers focuses on the
process and procedures of
Change Leaders promotes change and
creativity in working
Managers react to change by
making strategy and decisions.
The main role of leader in Unilever Ltd are:
 Leader is the representative of the organisation, his role is to communicate the vision of
company to outside public.
 The leaders integrate the employees personal goals with the organisational goals. He
influences the employee's performance towards the common purpose in order to achieves
objectives (Vaccaro and et.al., 2012).
 Leaders is a person who coordinate the support form his subordinates. He can achieve
this through his personality traits and skills which he possess.
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The characteristics of the manager in Unilever Ltd are:
 A manager is well organised in his work and also keeps his employees well organised
and on task.
 Planning the strategy and policies which needs to be achieved and make decisions to
improve the performance of employee in order to achieve the plan.
 Time-management and scheduling is another characteristic of a managers.
 Manager should be confident in his abilities and decisions in order to get work done by
the employees.
2. Analysing the role and function of leader and manager in different situation in company.
Both the leader and manager has different roles and responsibilities in Unilever Ltd. In an
organisation there can be various situation arises which can leads to affect the performance of the
organisation. In such situation, leader will perform his roles, whereas manager will handle it
according to his functions by applying various theories and concepts of management and
leadership.
Taking as an example, the Unilever is going to implement a new digital technology in
order to improve its operational efficiency of the organisation and minimising the manufacturing
cost thus increases the revenue of business (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). With the change in
company there are many situation which may arise, employee resistance, conflicts between
employees, financial crises, need for training, hiring new employees etc. There are different
leadership style which will be adopted by leaders and managers of operational department in
order to solve this situation. Such as:
Behaviour theory: As per the theory, the manager will make the de scions and strategy
regarding the implementation of technology. Manager will consider the skills and knowledge of
the employee. Whereas, leader with his transformational style will communicate those policies to
the employees and influence them to work in effective way.
Contingency theory: This theory states the change in leadership style with the change in
situation that arises in organisation. As per this theory, a leader will influence the employees in
order to bring the new technology so that they can adapt and work accordingly. The manager
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will set rules and policies and take decisions in order to be ensure that new technology will
smoothly implemented in the operations.
Because of the new change in the operation, there that are other issues that will be arises,
the leader and manager has to analyse and resolve the situation as per their roles and functions.
Implementing new technology will increase the financial burden of firm, hence it will affect the
overall profit of Unilever. In order to control the cost, manager will make strategies for
optimizing utilization of the available resources for production (McCaffery, 2018). A leader will
motivate and influence the employees to work will their full efficiency in the available resources
to increase the productivity. Leader will also negotiate and take formal meetings with the
suppliers for the prices of the raw material to reduce the cost of manufacturing.
In order to increase the revenue of the company, operational manager will make
strategies with sales manager to conduct the market research and analyse the needs for products
in the market. Based on the information, operational manager will make regarding the production
process. The leader will communicate the decisions and facilitates it, so that the employees
effectively understand it perform their task accordingly.
3. Analysing and evaluating the different theories and approaches to leadership applying in
Unilever Ltd.
In order to effectively use the skills and qualities in order to connect with people and their
needs and the need of the situation arises. There are various theories and approaches that helps a
leader to utilises their skills in a particular situation. Some of the theories with their pros and
cons are as follows:
Contingency theory:
According to this theory, there is no particular best style for a leader. The theories states
that a leader will adopt a style which will be suitable in that particular situation at workplace.
Leader or manager has to change or make the decisions, their motivational approach as per the
situation arises in Unilever. There are three elements that helps a leader to adapt a style to control
the leadership situation which is task structure, leader relationships, positioning power. Each of
the manager has their perceptive of adopting style (A GUIDE TO CONTINGENCY APPROACH
IN MANAGEMENT , 2019). Task- oriented leader will adopt this style when their team is
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performing well, relationship oriented leader will adopt this style when great customer
satisfaction is being achieved. The strength and weaknesses of contingency theory are as follows:
Strength:
 Contingency theory gives flexibility in leadership style. There are different styles hat will
work best in different situation at workplace.
 This theory gives emphasis on the employee relationship which is connected with the
effectiveness of the leadership style. This theory gives a new sight for the leadership that any person can become leader by
adopting and developing the skills and style (Castillo and Hallinger, 2018).
Weaknesses:
 This theory has a limitation of inadequate information that which of the behaviour style
will be suited in a particular situation. This approach is difficult to put in action, as it will be complexed for a leader to analyse
different style for a situation arises.
Lewin's leadership style theory:
According to this theory there are three styles that best defines the leadership approach in
a workplace.
Autocratic style:
This style of leadership focuses on controlling and commanding the subordinates. The
autocratic leader make decisions without involving the employees or considering their concerns.
There are clear division of work and authority between leaders and his employees.
Strength:
 This style is best suited when there is less time left for the task or quick decision has to be
made.
 The task will be well structures and managed by an autocratic leader. At lower level of management, only few competent subordinates are required (Ellis,
2018).
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Weaknesses:
 The purpose of the task are not well communicated to the employees which creates
complexity.
 Under this style, the subordinates feels restricted and are not allowed or involved in
decision making process which results in demotivation.
 This style hampers the leader to explore the new and creative ideas from their
subordinates.
Democratic style:
It is also known as participative leadership style, it is one of the most effective style of
leadership. A democratic leader will involve his subordinates in decision-making process and
take their opinion and suggestion for the improvement (Lane and Maznevski, 2019). He will
offer guidance to his subordinates.
Strength:
 It helps to motivate and encourage creativity of the subordinates.
 A democratic style of leadership is very effective in solving complex problems as the
leader in this style encourages innovation and creativity. This style help a leader to make a productive and motivated workforce which results in
providing productive and quality outcomes.
Weaknesses:
 This style is not suitable during the crises situation, as there is less time and leader can
not ask the employees for their suggestions.
 The decision making process in democratic leadership style is very time consuming as
the leader has to collect ideas and information frown all his team members.
 One of the weaknesses of this style is that, a democratic leader can not function well in
authoritarian situation.
Delegative:
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This style is well known as Laissez-Faire style, in this style leader hand over the
responsibility of work on his subordinates (Willis, Clarke and O'connor, 2017). Leader let his
team to decide the goal, make rules and working standard. This style leads to minimize the
leaders involvement in the decision making process in order to make the team member
responsible and self-sufficient.
Strength:
 This style is best suited when the employees are well capable and motivated to take the
right decisions.
 It helps to build a creative team which value the independence given by their leader.. This style work best when leader provides direction and proper information regarding
the task.
Weaknesses:
 In some situation this style leads to poorly defined the roles as there is little guidance. It
will leads to confusion among the employees.
 This style is not appropriate when the employees are not motivated, skilled or have little
knowledge regarding the task (Thorpe, 2016). In style as leaders has less involvement, this can also results in poor performance of the
employees and outcome.
System theory:
It is an useful theory to be applied in Unilever Ltd. This theory assist the manager and
leader to create such atmosphere in workplace so that employee can enhance and perform in
order to give better outcomes and high productivity. This theory will assist the management to
efficiently achieve the goals of company. In this theory, the leader will adopt an autocratic style,
and is effective when there is less time or quick decision has to be made for a project or task.
Situational Theory:
This theory states that there is no one fixed style for a leader. A leader has to be flexible
in order to adapt a styler which is best suited on a particular situation. This theory states that an
effective leader is one who can adopt different style in order to influence and motivate his
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employees in different situation arises. In Unilever Ltd this theory will assist the manager and
leader in order to effectively handle the different situation arises in different department
effectively.
Activity 2
Enclosed in PPT
Booklet
Booklet
4. Factors of business environment that impact the operational management and decision
making.
The factors which will affect the operational management of Unilever Ltd. Are as
follows:
Political: It includes the factors such as government tax policies and labour rates in country.
Increase in the tax and law labour rate will affect the operational cost of the company. The
leader and manager has to take decision in order to control the cost of the manufacturing and
increasing the sales if the company.
Economic: Increase in interest rates and tax on the import and export will affect the cost of raw
material which will impact the operational process. Increase in the price of the raw material will
leads to increment the cost of production. Leader can make decisions to search for new supplier
and negotiate with the existing one.
Social: the social factors like value and beliefs of the people regarding the product, the class
structure and income of customers are the factors that impact the operational activity (Slack and
Brandon-Jones, 2018). With the change in customers need the production process will also
change. Manager has to research the current need and trend of market and make their decisions
as per customer needs.
Technological: Increasing in the advancement of technology will leads to adapt the new
technology which will impact the operational process as company also have to adapt the new
methods to improve efficiency. Manager and leader has to make decision to implement the new
change successfully.
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Environmental: Organisation's operational process will get affected by the seasonal variation,
climate differences and the laws regarding less use of carbon.
Legal: The laws and regulation in the country leads to affect the operational process which
includes laws labour rate laws, employee laws, tariff rates etc. it does affect the efficiency of
operational and decision making process.
5. Analysing the factors affect the business environment and the wider community.
It can be said that, the business environment factors plays an important role in
operations management. It can be said that political factors like advancement of new
technology, digital operations and internet helped in improving efficiency if the operational and
logistic process (Mahadevan, 2015). However, it is also been critique that technology has leads
to increase in mismanagement and increasing the financial burden on the company.
CONCLUSION
By summing up the above report, it can be concluded that operational management is
critical for the success of the organisation. It can be analysed from the report that leader and
manager plays an essential role in Unilever Ltd. Report has concluded different theories of
leadership. Importance of operational management and role of leader and manager in improving
the efficiency has also been included in report.
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REFERENCES
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management in universities and colleges. Routledge.
Moutinho, L. ed., 2011. Strategic management in tourism. Cabi.
Renz, D. O., 2016. The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership and management. John
Wiley & Sons.
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Slack, N. and Brandon-Jones, A., 2018. Operations and process management: principles and
practice for strategic impact. Pearson UK.
Thorpe, R., 2016. Gower handbook of leadership and management development. CRC Press.
Vaccaro, I. G. And et.al., 2012. Management innovation and leadership: The moderating role of
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Willis, S., Clarke, S. and O'connor, E., 2017. Contextualizing leadership: Transformational
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ONLINE
12 Essential Qualities Of A Manager That Guarantee Success . 2019 [Online] Available
Through:<https://getsling.com/blog/qualities-of-a-manager/>.
A GUIDE TO CONTINGENCY APPROACH IN MANAGEMENT . 2019 [Online] Available
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management/>
What is Six Sigma? Streamlining quality management . 2019 [Online] Available
Through:<https://www.cio.com/article/3237692/methodology-frameworks/six-sigma-
quality-management-methodology.html>.
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