Operations Management: Leadership and Management Roles in Business

This report delves into the critical aspects of operations management, focusing on the roles of leaders and managers within the organizational structure. It begins by defining and comparing the distinct roles and characteristics of leaders and managers, highlighting their legal responsibilities and their impact on organizational growth. The report examines how these roles apply in various situational contexts, applying theories such as situational leadership, systems leadership, and contingency theory to assess their strengths and weaknesses in different work environments. It further explores the key approaches to operations management, including top-down, center-out, and bottom-up strategies, and evaluates how leaders and managers can improve operational efficiencies to meet business objectives. Finally, the report assesses the factors within the business environment that impact operational management and decision-making, analyzing how these factors affect the wider community, with a specific focus on the UK-based retail company, Argos, and its operational strategies.

Management Operation
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Task 1: LO1................................................................................................................................5
P1: Define and Compare the different roles and characteristics of a leader and a manager......5
Task 2: LO2:..............................................................................................................................7
P2: Examine examples of how the role of a leader or function of a manager apply in different
situational contexts.....................................................................................................................7
P3: Apply different theories or models of approach including situational leadership, systems
leadership and contingency........................................................................................................7
M2: Assess the strength and weaknesses of different approaches to situations within the work
environment................................................................................................................................8
D1: Critically examine the scope, development and growth of entrepreneurial ventures.........8
Task 3:........................................................................................................................................9
LO3:...........................................................................................................................................9
P4: Explain the key approaches to operations management and the role that leaders and
managers play.............................................................................................................................9
P5: Explain the importance and value of Operations management in achieving business
objectives..................................................................................................................................10
M3: Evaluate how leaders and managers can improve efficiencies of operational
managements to successfully meet business objectives...........................................................10
LO4:.........................................................................................................................................11
P6: Assess the factors within the business environment that impact upon operational
management and decision-making by leaders and managers..................................................11
M4: Analyze how these different factors affect the business environment and wider
community................................................................................................................................11
D2: Critically evaluate application of operations management and factors that impact the
wider business environment.....................................................................................................12
Conclusion................................................................................................................................13
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References................................................................................................................................14
Appendix:.................................................................................................................................15
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Introduction
Management operations are deeply concern with the functions of organising, planning,
controlling, supervising the production and manufacturing process. The organisation has to
ensure that they are successfully and efficiently turns their output to input in a sufficient
manner. The management operation has two fundamental parts one is supply chain
management and another is logistic. For the effective management supply there are parallel
line between the supply chain and logistic. One should specialise in such a manner to operate
the management operation in an efficient manner. The main role of the management
operation is to plan and coordinates the different resources of the organisation. The manager
operation converts the raw material of an organisation such as labour and material in a
sufficient manner to attain maximum profit. The operation manager’s main work is to ensure
that the products are successfully and timely turn into raw materials to finished goods.
In this project we are going to discuss management operation of the UK Company Argos, it is
founded in 1973. Argos is a UK based retail company. Argos is one of the largest high street
retail companies in UK. Argos has nearly 845 retail shop and 29 million customers annually.
The founder of the company is Richard Tompkins. Argos has total 23000 employee,
approximately 98% the UK population. The total sales of the company rises around 1.6
percent annually. The company developing their technology for the customer to make
shopping easy. The company implemented the new rules and regulations for the betterment of
the organisations. The first store of Argos is open in January 1996.
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Task 1: LO1:
P1: Define and Compare the different roles and characteristics of a leader and a
manager.
The term leader defines that the particular group of people have to follow the instruction of
the that particular leader but the manager means they have people who work with them to
achieve or attains the higher profit of an origination. According to the Haksever and Render
(2018), the characteristic of the leader is to direct the employees work in the same path and
inspire and motivate them to work hard to achieve the goal. On the other hand the manager
must have the skill of leadership, communication, time management, reliability, delegation
and confidant and respect for their employees. If the manager does not have the experience to
work in a professional environment then it is difficult for them to work or run the
organisation smoothly. The manager must have the ability to communicate with their teams
and patient enough to understand their problems. The leader and the manager both have their
legal responsibilities to fulfil. The leader can change and create the future growth and
development but the manager evaluate the complexity through planning, organising and
measuring the performances. The leader draw the attention of the group people in one
direction but the manager sets the goals and plans for the organisation.
The manager can developed the policies, procedure and system and the leader have to follow
the manager’s instructions to fulfil the organisational goal. The leadership have the
responsibilities of developing the leadership potential in both formal and informal manner.
Therefore, the role of the manager and the leader are different at the same time important for
the organisation. The leader of the company Argo fulfils all the responsibilities as per the
requirements to attain the organisational goal. The manager has implemented the new
policies and procedure for the betterment or the company. The Argo company do not just see
and listen they also try their best to solve the organisational problems. As per the present
scenario, the manager of the Argo Company follows the basic rules of the manager and fulfils
all the required actions (Ellis et al., 2016).
M1: Analyze and differentiate between the role of a leader and function of a manager.
The role of the leader is organising the action of the people towards the organisational goal.
The leader is someone who direct, supervises, and provides guidance to the group of
individual to achieve the organisational goal. They motivate the team member to work hard
efficiently and effectively. The function of a manager is planning, organising, staffing,
controlling. The manager must have the technical skill or specialised skill to perfume
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particular task. The manager should think conceptually and analytical to break the problems
in a small pieces so that they can easily solve them (Rajang et al., 2014).
D1: Critically examine the scope, development and growth entrepreneurial ventures
An entrepreneurial means a self employed person who has a right to take the undertakings of
an organisation. The scope of the entrepreneurial is wider in the selling department than
manufacturing department. Entrepreneurs can reduce their risk through planning, organising
and market research. Entrepreneur contributes a high percentage in national income of the
country. A venture development is important for an economy development of the country. A
small-scale business contributes a lot in the national income of the country. Entrepreneurial
venture is known as non-profit organisation. For the development of the business and
entrepreneurs, create new ideas, product and services to maximise the profit of the
organisation.
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Task 2: LO2:
P2: Examine examples of how the role of a leader or function of a manager applies in
different situational context
The manager’s main challenge is to solve the problem of the company and maintain the
discipline among the employees. The manager has four main functions planning, organising,
leading and controlling the activities of the organisation. The manager should have firstly
analysed the problem and then by using their professional skills they have to solve. The first
function of a manager is to plan or set the objectives of the organisation by analysing past
data and market research to forecast future changes. The leader is one who leads the group
activity in one direction to achieve the organisational goal. A good leader must have the
quality of good communication, creative and innovative, honest and passionate about their
work. The leader should have enough confidants to face any challenge and make sure that
other must follow their commands (Foster et al., 2015). The manager must have to evaluate
the actual performance with the targeted one. The manager must have the ability to work well
and coordinates with the other person in the organisations.
P3: Apply different theories or models of approach including situational leadership,
systems leadership and contingency.
In the work environment there are many theories and models are available that describe the
different leadership including situational, system and contingency leaderships. Situational
leadership means the leadership that describe that the particular leadership is not perfect to
apply its based on the situations and the condition of the organisation. The meaning of the
system leadership is different to understand for different people. System leadership means the
leadership where people at every level can work within their potential level. System
leadership uses some principals to create the good leadership in the organisation. System
leadership is interrelated elements that directed towards the particulars way to achieve the
goal of the organisation. The leadership effectiveness is depends on the effectiveness of the
team members. Contingency approach is concern with the relationship between the leader
and the situation. Contingency approach will not apply in every situation. The people who are
task oriented they will perform well in every situation whether it is favourable or not (Jay and
Barry 2016).
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M2: Assess the strength and weaknesses of different approaches to situations within the
work environment
The strength of the different approach in the work environments are discus below. The
strength of the leadership helps to develop the strong relationship between the team members.
A good leader can adjust in any situations and try to build a healthy work environment for the
team members and construct the better future for the organisations. To better understand your
leadership quality one must know the leadership style. There are six different leadership
styles in the work environment that includes democratic, visionary and commanding.
Situational leadership based on one time leadership style that may not fit in every situations
of an organisation. An effective leadership must have the quality to adjust in every situation.
System approach is not always practical. The nature of the system approach is interring
dependant hence not defined. The major disadvantage of this approach is it is not used in
small organisations. As compare to others, this system is more complex (Chiarini et al.,
2015).
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Task 3:
LO3:
P4: Explain the key approaches to operations management and the role that leaders and
managers play.
The three key approaches to operations management are:
 Top-down
 Centre-out
 Bottom-up
Top-down: The biggest advantage for this process is the consistency of the master data that
allows building a strong integration between the business and the opportunity and have strong
integration between the business and the manufacturing process (Heizer, 2016). Thus, the
approach takes the existing ERP and uses it as a backbone.
Centre-out: This approach is entirely built upon the management operations. It operates
directly with the enterprise and automation level software and supports the need of the
operations by opening integration with different ERPs.
Bottom-up: It is built around the automation system and readily matches the plant and units
within the system. However, this real-time information still needs to be modelled and
correlated into production information.
Apart from this 3, there are other approaches to be considered for operations management
viz. Business Process Redesign (BPR), Reconfigurable Manufacturing System (RMS)
and Six-Sigma.
Leaders set high-level directions for a certain work with encouragement towards newer
ideas. They articulate ideas to a greater level and sell them to other people (Holweg et al.,
2018). Leaders have a very abstract idea about the organization but are very sound in terms of
market related issues. They can take risks and often remain accountable to a company and its
profits.
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Managers on the other hand oversee work required to follow directions and implement
changes. They are analytical thinkers based on the company’s data and make sure that every
morning, previous day work is done. Other than this, they stay safe to thought out plans and
are only responsible for their own respective teams.
A very helpful example for understanding would be a leader comes in the morning with the
question, “what if?” whereas a manager enters the room with the question “what is?”
Leaders tend to work on a situation where fruition is not confirmed but managers touch only
that work that are going to work. They simply work on the needs and upgradations necessary.
P5: Explain the importance and value of Operations management in achieving business
objectives.
Usually people had the conception that operations management was only necessary in
manufacturing department, because manufacturing department deals with a lot of processes
and it basically involves from obtaining the raw material to the selling of goods and in some
cases, manufacturing department also involves the sales planning and analogy. Thus was the
belief that operations management is only required or mostly important for the manufacturing
industry. Whenever the company is selling the product nowadays, the first thing to be
considered is the customer requirement and specifications. This is a very important part of an
industry. Usually the marketing team collects data and provide it during the time of
manufacturing and modelling. In this way they can keep a log of what the customers are
asking for. Management combines and transforms various resources used in the operations
subsystem of the organization as per the policies of the organization. The manufacturing
department on other hand manufactures product based upon that very requirement and
specification that are desired by the customers. With changing needs, a company incorporates
these approaches to understand the market and likewise increases the growth and sale of their
products.
M3: Evaluate how leaders and managers can improve efficiencies of operational
managements to successfully meet business objectives.
Leaders and managers are always thriving for more betterment since the business
environment demands so. In order to follow that, a standardized system is introduced that
runs on certain pre-set protocol resulting in actual improvement.
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Six-Sigma is an ideology that focuses on statistical improvements in a business process. It
advocates for quality measurements of success over quality markers. Therefore, practitioners
of Six-Sigma are for the business people who use statistics, financial analysis and project
management to achieve improved business (Trzeciak, 2018).
LO4:
P6: Assess the factors within the business environment that impact upon operational
management and decision-making by leaders and managers.
Factors that usually affect a business are:
 Political
 Economic
 Social
 Technological
 Legal
These factors influence the operational management of a company and influence the
decision-making (Vahlne, 2017).
M4: Analyze how these different factors affect the business environment and wider
community.
Business environment is the situation that is created by the external or internal relations of the
company through a number of its businesses. A company would never want to stay limited
into certain areas but it happens so due to a number of reasons or factors that has been
incorporated keeping in mind a certain set of agendas.
Political Environment effects business in various ways. The political ideology, philosophy,
foreign policy, defence and military policy all decides how a particular business can run in
that given region. There are products, that doesn’t allow licensing of certain products and
there are countries where certain products are banned completely. This type of situation
hugely hampers business.
Economic Environment is a bigger issue in this, since a company needs capital for growth.
Economically poor countries do not flourish much with their business. The reason behind
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being there are very little funding for such ventures. Also in certain regions of the world,
there are demands for certain products, catering which can result in flourishing of a company.
Social Issues are a very big factor as if a product is socially harmful or touchy in certain
senses, marketing that product in that particular can cause havoc loss for that company. Since
every business deals with its customers, they have to take care of them and see that it doesn’t
hurt their feelings.
Technology is a new generation reason that business houses now consider considering.
Nowadays everything runs on you mobile app as people founds it handy; rather than surfing
on one’s desktop. A business in today’s world should possess a digital outlook, otherwise
they cannot reach the people nor can they become customer friendly.
Legal matters of a country are another pivotal part since not everything is legalized
everywhere. It is quiet a common factor since most of the above mentioned points come into
consideration here. Social, Political and Economic grounds are the major consideration.
Based on mostly these three grounds, a country or region legalizes or prohibits certain
product manufacturing or product selling.
D2: Critically evaluate application of operations management and factors that impact
the wider business environment.
Industrial Revolution began long back during 1770s in England and gradually spread to the
rest of Europe and United States by 19th century. Production became faster and low-cost
which eventually provided countless jobs. People like Henry Ford, Frank Gilbreth
contributed tons in this revolution but there was lack of one small discipline throughout,
something that we refer today as “Management Operations”. Coined by J. F. McCloskey and
F. N. Trefethen, “Management Operations” went on to become a pivotal part for an
organization.
Argos, found in 1973, is currently UK’s most important common merchandise retailer and
leading catalogue chain with sales of over 3 billion pounds. Argos has gained competitive
advantages larger than its rivals by differentiating itself on the basis of best value for money
for customers with the most suitable shopping experience. Supply chain is the most
convulsive approach managed by the organization. They provide proper training to their
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employees and assign them as an adviser accordingly. With a constant workflow and growing
customer base, Argos is a model for many companies who are growing.
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Conclusion
The assessment report prepared above, talks about the managerial as well as operational
issues of a company. In here, it has been evaluated on how a company’s management works
and the approaches taken for timely deliverance. A company is solely based on its customers
and products which are clearly beyond compromising. To carry on the similar goodwill,
companies follow certain well-set rules about which this assessment report speaks of. It also
throws light on the predefined processes that are incorporated when working on
improvement. It happens at times that a company gets rejected or barred from production,
marketing or several such managerial issues from a certain region or zone. A number of
issues come in to consideration at this juncture which has also been discussed thoroughly
within the above assessment report. This report will give a better insight of many of the
managerial issues as well as the ways to overcome them. Operational Managements are not
bound within a small department nowadays but are seriously used in every aspects of a
company. Thus, the importance of this field is no second.
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References
Chiarini, A. ed., 2015. Sustainable Operations Management: Advances in Strategy and
Methodology. Springer.
Ellis, M.D., Lemmons, T.R. and Thomas, W.L., Rovi Guides Inc, 2016. Client-server
electronic program guide. U.S. Patent 9,426,509.
Foster, S.T., Sampson, S.E., Wallin, C. and Webb, S.W., 2015. Managing Supply Chain and
Operations. Pearson.
Haksever, C. and Render, B., 2018. Service and Operations Management. World Scientific
Books.
Heizer, J., 2016. Operations Management, 11/e. Pearson Education India.
Hernandez, V.L., 2017. Lean Six Sigma in a University Service Environment: Distinct
Perspectives of Lean Implementation in Brownfield and Greenfield Projects (Doctoral
dissertation, The University of Texas at San Antonio).
Holweg, M., Davies, J., De Meyer, A. and Schmenner, R., 2018. Process Theory: The
Principles of Operations Management. Oxford University Press.
Jay, H. and Barry, R., 2016. Operations Management. Pearson India.
Rajan, S.N., Schakel, K.R., Smith, M.J.S., Wang, D.T. and Weber, F.D., Google Inc,
2014. Performing power management operations. U.S. Patent 8,667,312.
Trzeciak, S., Mercincavage, M., Angelini, C., Cogliano, W., Damuth, E., Roberts, B.W.,
Zanotti, S. and Mazzarelli, A.J., 2018. Lean Six Sigma to Reduce Intensive Care Unit Length
of Stay and Costs in Prolonged Mechanical Ventilation. Journal for Healthcare
Quality, 40(1), pp.36-43.
Vahlne, J.E. and Johanson, J., 2017. The internationalization process of the firm—a model of
knowledge development and increasing foreign market commitments. In International
Business (pp. 145-154). Routledge.
Van Der Aalst, W.M., La Rosa, M. and Santoro, F.M., 2016. Business process management.
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Appendix:
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