Management and Operations Assignment Level 5 CBC College

A) Difference between a Leader and a Manager

Both leader and manager work simultaneously for the betterment of company and to maintain its brand image in the market. Good leaders and mangers always help to compete with its rivals in the market.

Leader: Leaders are those pillars of the organization or company who guides its team members and motivate them to achieve the company's goal. It sets directions for the team to follow. Its main aim is to increase growth and development of the company. A Leader helps to minimize upcoming risks and threats to the company. They work for it's's effectiveness. A good leader should have qualities such as- he must be innovative, motivated, confident and having good leadership . He should also acts as a guide or mentor who encourages its whole team to work hard and completes their tasks. (Hassan, Mahsud and Prussia, 2013). He will asign work to his team members to work in proper manner. A good leader is must for the company. for innovation and to put all their hard work.

Manager: A person who manages the entire organization is known as a manager. He is responsible for planning, giving directions and executing them. A good manager always plans strategies for the employees to work efficiently. He is a good decision maker for the organization and is always ready to take risks and plann to overcome from it. Responsibilities that a good manager should have is, he must be innovative in terms of giving new ideas to the organization, planning and executing it, giving directions to the employees (Heizer and et.al., 2009). Managers have effective decision-making skills.They have a very good business developing skillsand can produce more revenue from their products.

B) Comparisons of roles and characteristics of leaders and managers

Some major differences between a leader and manager are as following:

Vision: A good leader has a vision in its mind on how to work efficiently while a manager has the ability to execute that vision by making some strategic plans for the employees.

Ability to challenge: Leader generally tries to minimize the risks while a manager tries to take risks and tries to overcome it.

Decision making: A leader always tries to facilitate decisions while a manager makes decisions for the employees to work effectively.

Implementation: A good leader always tries to innovate or invent new ideas while a manager always tries to manage things which are already exists in the organization.

Aim: A leader’s aim is to always increase the growth and development of company while manager tries to attain the end result.

Orientation: Leaders generally are people oriented while managers are task oriented.

Outcomes / Results: The main outcomes of leaders are their achievements while that of manager is the final outcome/ result.

Focus: Leaders main focus is on leading their team members while managers manage the whole work of that team (Seuring, 2013).

Approach towards tasks: Leaders lookout for problems and try to create new solutions. They motivate and help other employees to solve the problems by themselves. On the other hand, managers create different policies, strategies, to come up with new and innovative ideas to execute.

C) Explain the following

1. role of a leader: Leadership is a practical skill which has the ability to guide other individual in the entire organizations. Leaders focus on an organization’s strengths to analyze its current situation. A good leadership is always required in the organization to work efficiently and smoothly. They give guidance to their team members to work properly. For representing the company, a good leader plays a vital role. It helps to set a clear vision ahead of their team to understand and accept the work assigned to them.

They help to motivate the employees and guiding them to make them understand their work. A good leader tries to connect to their team members. Leader empowers the employees with honesty and transparency to work hard in the organization (Dale, 2015). A good leader has great communication skills which help them communicate the policies very precisely and effectively. They have a great sense of responsibility which is very important to work in the organization. For example, if the organization is planning to launch some new products in the market, he will first go through the product's research analysis and then will allot the work to the team.He will allot work to different employee to work efficiently and in faster rate. In this way, a leader works in the organizations by taking all the employees together.

II. The functions of a manager

A manager plays many functions in the organization to manage things. It can be planning, directing, controlling, organizing, leading, etc.

Planning: It is the basic step which is required for the organization to work. Planning anything before executing it will help an organization to grow efficiently.

Directing: After planning, directing that plan is the next process for the manager to execute. Properly directing and guiding the employees is an important task for the manager.Giving proper directuin and guidance to the employee is most important for the manager.

Organizing: Organizing the plan is the next process which is done to synchrone and making sure that everything is going smoothly. Every task should be done in proper manner to work fast and effectively (Du and et.al., 2013).

Coordinating: Coordination between the employee and the manager is also impoprtant fot the organization to maintain a healthy environment.

Controlling: Manager has a great controlling power so its his job to make sure that everything is working in control.

D) Explanation of how a manager you identified carry out his/her functions giving examples

Retail manager has to run his store successfully in order to maintain brand image of the store in the repective market. They should be always keeping in contact with their customers and staff members. They have to ensure that the staff is giving their bestservices to the customers and making a good profit from it.

Responsibilities of the retail manager include:

• Recruiting, Training, Supervising and Appraising staff: First he will recruit the employees which are most suitable for the company. They should be hard working. After recruiting, he will organise a training session to give them some basic knowledge of their work and how to do it.
• Managing budgets: To maintain budget of the company, manager should always have a balanced amount of money in the company's budget to fulfil all needs and requirements of staff as well as organization.
• Maintaining Statistical and Financial Records: He should always have a record of the finance department and maintaining a proper balance in statistical and financial records.
• Dealing with Customer Queries and Complaints: Manager should always make sure that customer feedback is his first priority and should be positive always. And if there is any such complaints or queries coming from customer side they should immediately be solved.
• Stock control: Manager should always ensure that enough stock is there to fulfill all needs of the customers.
• Ensuring compliance with Health and Safety legislation: Health and safety is most important to take care of. If the staff members are not feeling well, they will give no output from their side. To main a good working environment in the comoany, health and safety of the customers should be considered by him.
• Preparing Promotional events: Organizing some promotional events to promote the products and interacting with people will help a company to build trust among people of society. This helps to increase the customers.

These are some points which the appointed retail manager should keep in mind to run his company smoothly and work efficiently in order to gain more revenue.

E) Explaining how leadership models are applied in the organisation by manager

eadership behavior There are three types of leadership approach i.e. situational , systems and contingency leadership. To run the company smoothly the manager should apply all these approaches towards his/her work. For example, in situational or contingency leadership, the manager should apply his/her styles or strategies in order to fulfil the requirement (Northouse, 2012). These types of approaches encourage the manager to analyze the situations in detail and come up with most appropriate solution.

A) Key approaches to Operational Management

Operational management refers to planning, executing and controlling the administration of a business to increase the efficiency of it in all possible ways within an organization by converting its resources into desired goods and services. There are several key approaches that Amazon Company applies in their system, such as: Designing: It is done by applying new and advanced technology which can meet the needs of customers. For example, Amazon uses some advanced informational and communication technologies to make sure that their online retail services are working efficiently and satisfying every customer’s needs and requests.

Location Strategy: For the location, Amazon is putting effort to locate their warehouses to the areas that are near to their maximum number of customers on their online retail shop.

Quality Management: In this section, the operational management team makes sure that the quality they are providing to their customers by satisfying their expectations. This requires continuous improvement in their online retail stores.

Supply Chain Management: The operational management ensures that the supply of their goods and services are reaching to their customers on time. Amazon has also has a option to track the order and can directly communicate with the suppliers to get the details of his/her order.Maintenance: In this section, the operational management team makes sure that the maintenance of the company's warehouse is up to date. They ensure that it has enough stock available. Amazon has a specialized team for maintaining technological assets of the company.

These are some of the most important key approaches of the Amazon which they are following to grow their business more and more in this competitive world.

B) Role of Amazon leaders and managers with regards to its operations management

Leaders and managers can connect effectively with their employees to understand the value of work. They play a crucial role with regards to its operational management. Both of them work together to achieve its target or goals which is to make their customers happy and satisfied They frequently plan or make some strategies with innovative ideas to implement on their online retail website to make it more attractive and efficient to use by of the customers (Hassan, Mahsud and Prussia, 2013). The leader of Amazon tried to keep his employees motivated and dedicated towards their work . With the guidance of proper leadership and management of the company it has increased its shipping speed very effectively as compared with many rivalry companies. They have also started their one day delivery option to attract more customers. The company has also invested a huge amount on its infrastructure and technology.

In between, some attractive plans are coming on website which makes it more popular amongst all other online retailing shops. All these activities are managed by leaders and managers of Amazon as they indirectly represent the company's name in the market. So it’s very important for them to have good and effective team of leaders and managers who can perform all these tasks. Moreover, they work as 2 important pillars of the organization (Heizer and et.al., 2009). The dream of Amazon is to increase its availability by 85% in coming future to gain to top level in market. All this will be done by the operational management team of the company along with some plans and strategies made by company's leaders and managers. Amazon has also stepped into grocery-market in US and UK to attract customers who often shop groceries online. This has leaded the company to maintain its position in the market of online shopping.

C) Importance of operations management in accomplishing goals of organization (P5)

The operations management is required to be managed in that way by which company may be able to achieve stated goals in the best possible manner. There is immense importance of operations management in Amazon so that it accomplishes desired goals in timely manner. It includes managerial duties and responsibilities of leader as well to effectively achieve goals of the company in effectual way. The inputs or resources are transformed in that way by which output can be generated with reduced costs. This will bring efficiency and as such, optimum utilisation of resources will take place and as a result, wastage would be minimised as well.

Furthermore, value of operations management in Amazon is that customer services are provided in fast and quick manner. It is the main reason which has made this organization successful as deliveries regarding orders are imparted them at a faster rate. Thus, quicker deliveries are made possible because of enhanced operations management of company. Moreover, another value of this management is to increase overall productivity in the best possible manner. The importance of operations management team is to seek that productivity is enhanced in a better way so that customer's orders are fulfilled at the earliest and as such, expectations are met effectively and that too within stipulated time.

An operation management streamlines overall performance of company and as a result, better results can be obtained which gradually enhances sales of firm and more profits can be garnered in effectual manner. For meeting effectively demand of the customers', Amazon should analyse resources in that way so that business may be able to meet orders of customers in effective way. If resources are not adequately available, operations management streamlines the same and made available it to accomplish goals.

D) Assessing the factors which affects the internal environment of Amazon

There have been various operations which in turn affects the internal business operations of Amazon (Gupta, 2017). However, there can be some influence of various variables and factors which affect the business operation of this business such as:

I Operational management

Amazon mainly operates in selling products through its online site which in turn has the impacts over the operational activities in the business. There are various brands and companies which are collaborative to the firm in terms of making appropriate improvements in the business operations (5 Factors that Influence Business Environment, 2018). On the other side, this business operates in various countries which will have impacts of cultural diversity that will be indicative and affective to the business.

II. Decision-making of leaders

The business is operating over online platform and has huge brand varieties which are clothes, accessories, gadgets etc. therefore, it has a huge workforce which helps in controlling the operational tasks (Choi, Chan and Yue, 2017). The decision made by professionals to extent the business on global level brings them positive response from the consumers (Akhtar and et.al., 2018). Therefore, all the products and services which are being provided by them to all the cultural area which will be effective in terms of rising the profitable gains of Amazon.

Conclusion

From the above report, it has been concluded that leadership in any organisation is a basic necessity for growth. Moreover, there is an essential need for management and operations especially in e-commerce industry. This report has given the role of managers in operations. The functions of manager are very important for leading any organisation in industry. Situational leadership, system leadership and contingency leadership have their own merits as well as demerits which are elaborated in the above report. There are many factors which has a major impact on the wider business environment.

References

• Akhtar, P. and et.al., 2018. Essential micro foundations for contemporary business operations: Top management tangible competencies, relationship based business networks and environmental sustainability.British Journal of Management.29(1). pp.43-62
• Choi, T. M., Chan, H. K. and Yue, X., 2017. Recent development in big data analytics for business operations and risk management.IEEE transactions on cybernetics.47(1). pp.81-92.
• Dale, B., 2015. Total quality management. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
• Du, S. and et.al., 2013. The roles of leadership styles in corporate social responsibility. Journal of business ethics. 114(1). pp.155-169.
• Gupta, S., 2017. Knowledge Economy: A Need for Social Reformation.Journal of Management Science, Operations & Strategies (e ISSN 2456-9305).1(1). pp.16-20.
• Hassan, S., Mahsud, R. and Prussia, G. E., 2013. Ethical and empowering leadership and leader effectiveness. Journal of Managerial Psychology. 28(2). pp.133-146.
• Heizer, and et.al., 2009. Operations Management. Pearson Education India.
• Northouse, G.P., 2012. Leadership: Theory and Practice. SAGE Publications.
• Okurame, D., 2012. Impact of career growth prospects and formal mentoring on organisational citizenship behaviour. Leadership & Organization Development Journal. 33(1). pp.66 – 85.

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