Introduction
A manager is a person setting goals and developing systems and structures of an organisation. On the other hand, a leader is a person simply directing and motivating employees to accomplish objectives. Both managers and leaders work with people but there are differences in their roles and characteristics (Aldag and Stearns, 1991). They perform various roles in operations management and choosing the approaches to Operations management. This paper is a formal report which had been done on operations management. Various key issues have been discussed in this report by dividing the report into two major activities. In activity one, the roles and characteristics of leaders and managers, use of different management and leadership theories, and the roles of leaders and functions of managers have been explained (Aldag and Stearns, 1991). In activity two, the importance of operations management, different approaches to Operations management and the factors affecting operations have been focused with required details.
Task 1: LO1 & LO2
P1: Definition and the differences in roles and characteristics of managers and leaders
Manager is a person who exercises direction of a group of individuals in an organization such as Tesco having different superior job positions such as executive, administrative and supervisory position. Katz in 1955 defined manager as a individual who develops staffs, mentors individuals with high potential and manages mutual conflicts among workers and between employees and organization (2012books.lardbucket.org, 2020).
According to Kotter, “manager is a persona who takes care of planning, organising, budgeting coordinating and monitoring activities for a group of individuals.” On the other hand, leader is a person who basically directs followers or group of individuals. John Maxwell defined leader as persona performing collective action to vitalise. According to Robert Greenleaf, Leader is a person who serves others having followers and social influence process.” Kotter in 1990 defined leader as the person focusing on motivation and inspiration to create passion to take risk and meet goals.
Both managers and leaders in Tesco PLC work with workers and they both work for accomplishing goals. They have both effective skills such as good communication skills, human skills, and technical skills. Through are same in some contexts, they are different also in terms of roles and characteristics.
Difference in characteristics: Managers basically focus in developing systems and organizational structure where leaders focus on people to accomplish goals and make the operations done. Leaders are creative, innovative, and more original and originator where managers of Tesco PLC are administrator, more classic, rational decision maker, and tough minded (Bridges and Bridges, 2020). Leaders are visionary, passionate, courageous, imaginative, more flexible, inspiring where managers of Tesco PLC are more persistent, analytical, more structured and formal, authoritative, and deliberate.
Managers are risk avoiders where leaders are core risk acceptors. Leaders use their power forcefully being transformational where managers use their power carefully transactional.
Managers have formal authority on their subordinates where managers have formal influence in their followers (Bridges and Bridges, 2020). Managers tend to make decisions doing things right but leaders tend to facilitate decision making doing the right things. Managers are more standardized relying on their control where leaders are more innovative inspiring trust.
Difference in roles: Managers in an organisation such as Tesco PLC work for basically promoting stability, exercising authority, and getting things right where leaders work for developing changes, creating new approaches, strategies and gaining their commitment towards their followers. Within the Tesco Company, managers give more importance on developing systems and creating new structure where leaders give importance of three key issues such as Communication, motivation and shared goals (Bridges and Bridges, 2020).
Leaders communicate the set goals with followers, motivate employees in performing respective duties and responsibilities, and accomplish shared goals. Managers within Tesco PLC perform the routine tasks with routine complexity where leaders perform actions going beyond the routine or regular structure. Leaders rather develop vision for Tesco such as ‘to improve quality and raise long term customer satisfaction’, align the people with vision and motive the people to take their duties to meet the long term vision (Daft and Lane, 2015). Along with planning, organising resources, and allocating resources and duties, managers find and control daily problems in operations and work for implement the vision developer by leaders.
P2: How the roles of a leader and functions of a manager apply in different situations
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