Role of Leader and the Function of Manager

TASK 1

1.1: Role and characteristics of a leader and managers

Starbucks was established in 1971 and employing over 238,000 people on their over 28000 locations worldwide. Company has a wide range of food products and beverages for meeting the demands and requirements of customers and market. Organisational structure of Starbucks UK is flatter because there are very few levels of authority between administrative and low level employees. This structure ensures that information is transferred easily from top level to low level employees.

Leader:

A leader is the person who is very knowledgeable in their field and who knows how to lead people in times of need. Leader is responsible for structuring and managing the task for achieving the desired goals and objectives of the company. These monitors the work and performance of the low level employees. Leaders defines the plan and policies to workers which were formulated by the management.

Managers:

Managers are responsible for formulating the effective plans and policies in order to execute and evaluate future business activities after assigning the roles and responsibilities to their workers on the basis of their skills and capabilities for achieving desired goals and managers (Giegerich, 2010) . There are many departments in Starbucks which are supervised by managers such as project managers, line managers, departmental managers, etc. They concentrate on providing guidelines and support to the team members for achieving the objectives of the Starbucks.

Roles of a Leader:

• Building team: In order to get positive result, it is important for people to work in a team and gives their combined efforts. A leader is responsible for building a unique team with right mix of skills to enhance the interest and working behaviour of team members to perform better. Leaders of Starbucks should use right mix of employees for creating a unique team for achieving team goals.
• Motivator: For bringing improved and positive outcomes, it is important that every employee of an organisation must work hard and give their best shot. So, leaders should act as a motivator for encouraging employees by conducting various training and learning programs for enhancing their skills and knowledge and brings motivation and self-confidence among them. It is must for a leader of Starbucks to implement required policies and strategies to encourage the members for contributing their maximum efforts.
• Communication: Communication and coordination between employees and teams are necessary for achieving desired goals. The main role of leaders of Starbucks is to communicate effectively with their team members and higher authorities regarding strategies and polices setup by management related to performance of an organisation and ensures that the employees are performing in right manner.

Roles of a Manager:

• Formulating policies and plans: Before executing future business activities, it is important for an organisation have a suitable plans and policies which direct their workforce to perform in right direction. Therefore, the managers here play an important role in formulating an effective decisions and plans after getting feedbacks from their employees so as to ensure to get maximum positive outcome in near future.
• Monitoring and controlling: Managers control and regulates all business operations and activities in a effective manner with a motive of providing quality products with the help of utilising available resources in an optimum manner (Grant, Wong and Trautrims, 2017).
• Providing training: The managers of Starbucks should require to conduct training programs in order to enhance their employees skills and capabilities. Evaluation of employees performance should require to carried out through comparing actual with expected performance.

Comparison between Leaders and managers

Characteristics of leader and managers

• Positive attitude: Both leader and managers are necessary for providing guidance and support to employees for achieving the desired goals and objectives of an organisation. They both deals with requirements of clients for improving future business growth. Positive attitude among managers and leaders of Starbucks helps both managers and leaders in handling issues or conflicts and dealing with them effectively in less time.
• Creative: Both the managers and leader should have necessary creative skills that helps them in bringing more innovative and creative ideas and strategies which will help the Starbucks to achieve success and growth in future time. They should need to use their creative and innovative skills in order to attract more customers to buy their products and services.
• Confident: It is necessary for managers and leaders to become confident in implementing strategies and policies for bringing future growth to the company. Lack of confidence among Starbucks managers and leaders can leads to negative results on customers so it is important for both to have confidence while performing their business activities in the organisation (Groves, Frater and Stokes, 2011).
• Motivator: Managers and leader should need to have good motivation skills and are responsible for providing motivation and guidance to the employees for getting better result. They both communicate with team members to collect their important feedbacks and suggestions for implementing new policies and strategies. Starbucks needs to consider opinions and feedbacks of employees for increasing their motivation towards the task assigned to them.

TASK 2

2.1: Roles of leaders and functions of managers in different situations

These situations regularly happened within the company. So, It is the responsibility of the management to identify such changes in the situations of the organisation for improving productivity and performance of the employees (Karnani, 2011).

• Stable situation- In such situations the Changes in situations does not take place frequently. managers needs to analyse the speed of change and evaluation must be done for whether that change is good fro company or not. Starbucks managers should motivate their employees towards working efficiently in such different situations and be prepared for the changes, if required.
• Stable to moderate situation- These situation changes happen less frequently in nature. Trends and demands of the people in the food industry can be considered as stable to moderate change for the organisation for which leaders are required to take suitable essential decisions which should be implemented by the managers. Managers of Starbucks should adopt suitable strategies for determining these changes in trends or behaviour of customers for generating more profit.
• Fast situations- In such situation, changes takes place very frequently. For example- technological changes such as launching of mobile application or any digital platform should be considered important by the Starbucks management. If employees are not accepting changes than it is required by managers to convey the importance of change to the employees. Managers must properly and regularly use communication skills and strategies for informing employees regarding the changes.

2.2: Various models and theories of approach including leadership styles

There are different theories and approaches for leadership which are used by Starbucks company for improving the performance as well as productivity of the organisation. managers and leaders of Starbucks should implement these various theories of leadership described below for achieving desired goals and objectives (Khan and Lund-Thomsen, 2011).

• System leadership: This theory is extensively used by managers and leaders in order to provide solution of issues and conflicts related to business operation for achieving the desired goals. Leaders and managers should need to resolve the issues in a systematic and effective manners. Therefore top authority of Starbucks should identify such factors which impacts the business activities and implement suitable policies for reducing such issues in the company. This also helps in maintaining healthy and stress free environment in the company (Marchington and et. al., 2016).
• Situational theory: This theory states that leader need to adopt various styles of leadership on the basis of nature of problems arises at workplace. According to this, same style of leadership is not effective in all types of situations instead the leader should use different flexible theories based on the problem. Managers and leaders of Starbucks should use situational theory according to the nature of situations for efficiently carrying out activities and operations.
• Contingency theory: This theory states that effectiveness of the leader and managers depends on their style of their leadership which is to be implemented by them which fits with the situations arises. The leadership style in such theory is either task oriented or people oriented. Task-oriented is related to achieving goals of a company where as people oriented related to building interpersonal relationship. Starbucks leaders and managers should effectively use this theory as due to having experience and skills for determining the type of situation and providing solution for resolving the problem.

• Strengths and weakness of these 3 theories

Contingency theory of leadership:

• Strengths: This theory is linked to the situation which arises in leadership. It is not necessary for a leader to be effective in every situation.
• Weaknesses: It does not explain the reason behind why some people are effective leaders in only certain situations. Another weakness is the LPC scale.

System theory of leadership:

• Strengths: This theory is focused on achieving individual as well as organisational goals.
• Weakness: This theory often delays the decision making process because it is not always practical.

Situational theory of leadership:

• Strengths: This leadership styles exists in managers from a very long period of time and broadly used by companies for training leaders and managers for improving their performance.
• Weakness: This theory have limited studies and research for confirming the assumptions.

These different leadership theories plays a essential role in the development of a leader. The main theories of leadership are situational, contingency and system styles of leadership which effects the performance of the leaders as well as of companies (Pedrycz and Chen, 2015).

Chaos theory

It states that the markets undergoes several changes related to global economic slowdown or change in customer behaviour due to recession in the market. The company should adapt themselves according to the situation by changing their objective, goals and strategy. When company identifies the change in the preference and demand of the customers then it should accordingly adapt themselves by improving the existing product and present to the customer as a new alternative product in order to sustain in the market.

Management by objectives

Management by objective aims to enhance the performance and productivity of the company by clearly defining the objectives agreed by both the employees and the management. From an organization’s point of view it is very necessary that both the management and the employee works together to create and define the goals of the organization to achieve. The objectives must complies with the resources available in the organization.

TASK 3

3.1: Key approaches to operations management

Organisation plays a important part in converting input into output and then transferring it to the external environment. It works with the managements functions like planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. A company is defined by its transparent system which includes interactions and communication between business and its external environment. Some key approaches of operation management are mentioned below:

• Total quality management: This approach states that the products and services which are to be delivered consist of best quality that company serves to the desired customers for satisfying their needs and requirement. Basically companies concentrates on total quality management approach for producing quality based products and services forfulfiling customer's demands. Starbucks offers best featured and attractive products with best quality to their customers which helps in generating more revenues by attracting more customers towards the company (Rastogi, 2010).
• Just in time: It refers to stocks management process where company concentrates on managing and controlling stocks from production process. It leads to improved efficiency and reduced costs or wastage. So just in time approach helps a company in developing improved and new products on the time of market requirement. Starbucks should control their inventory management system through this approach for better and improved production of products.
• Lean products: This approach is used for reducing the costs as well as wastage in production department because it provides support to the production department in generating best profits from limited resources. Starbucks should apply this approach for quality products and less wastage of raw materials.
• Six Sigma: This approach includes various tools and techniques which helps customers to securely order defect free by providing adequate transportation methods from the organisation. This will help employees of Starbucks to maximise the satisfaction level of customers by increasing quality based products (Rohini and Mallikarjun, 2011).

Importance of operations management

A systematic approach in carrying out activities will always helpful in spontaneous improvement in performance of the organisation in terms of capacity and outcomes. It is concerned with various procedures and methods for implementing strategies and focus on improving performance and results. Various operational functions are described below:

• Control and Distribution system: Control and distribution system helps in transferring and distributing the products to the end user and their restaurants for fast delivery which will positively effect the company. Starbucks is using their structured supplier chain of distribution with the help of different suppliers which is proved to be effective for the company.
• Process design: The process of production is very necessary for an company. The design of this process must be in a structures and systematic way for carrying out activities in an effective and efficient manner. Starbucks should develop better and improved design for attracting more customers and producing quality products based on the demand.
• Logistics and inventory management: Logistics and inventory management is necessary for the company for developing efficient and quality based products. These provides resources and raw materials to the company for producing products in production department. Starbucks should manage and control their logistics and inventory division for transferring and producing these products for fulfilling the demands of customers.
• Scheduling: It is also a positive element of operation management which helps in management of time and product as it results in increase in the efficiency and productivity of work. Time management results in providing improved products and services to the consumers in specified time. Scheduling of product is necessary for Starbucks in delivering their quality products on right time under right conditions (Shuxin, 2011).

TASK 4

4: Dimensions of the Contemporary business environment

Environment is referred to the surroundings or situations in an organisation in which a specific activity is carried out in the organisation where the organisation considers the hierarchical structure where all products are put together to obtain best results.

• Corporate Social responsibility: It is described as the approach of business which contributes to the sustainable development by bringing economic, social and environmental benefits to its stakeholders. The leadership and management in Starbucks plays a great role in context of CSR. The company must adopt short time goals for the company which is considered as beneficial for the company.
• Culture: is defined as ideas or social behaviour of people at a particular place. The culture of a organisation effects the business directly as the companies are identifying the culture of a specific place and produce the products based on the culture of that place. Culture also plays an important role in operations management as at the time of operation process, the culture of the employees is taken into account and suitable strategies are made to increase the productivity of employees.
• Values: these are defined as principals of individuals behaviour. Values are considered as necessary factor in Starbucks as the products and services of the company is developed and improved after identifying the values and beliefs of the customer of a place. In the operations management, values are considered as important elements to decide the standards of the production.
• Ethics: For following the Corporate Social Responsibility, Starbucks should practice ethical business and ensure that the operations of the company are not harming the stakeholders . Ethical business is defined as the business which is done by following the ethics and its target is to benefit its stakeholders (White, 2016).
• Sustainability: It effects the operations management as it ensures that the resources of the company are utilized according to the needs and demands in an effective process. It helps in increasing the efficiency and performance of the operations management.

Stakeholders and meeting stakeholders expectations

The management and leadership of an organization should need to efficiently fulfil the demands and requirements of their stakeholders and take care of them. A stakeholder is defined as the individuals that have the stake in the company. Therefore it is the responsibility of each company to meet their expectations. Consumers is the primary stakeholder of an company who expects quality products from the organization at a low price. Company must ensure that their expectation are fulfilled.

CONCLUSION

It has been concluded from above report that operations management is necessary for the development of Starbucks. The roles and responsibilities of managers and leaders are related to each other and their performance often interfere with each other. The roles, responsibilities and characteristics of managers and leaders are explained with specific reference to the Starbucks. Different theories and models of leadership along with the importance and value of operations management in achieving organisational goals has been discussed in the report. Further the internal and external factors that impacts upon the operational management and decision-making of Leaders and managers of Starbucks has also been analysed. These factors together greatly affects the business environment which can be minimised by the management of Starbucks by implementing necessary strategies and policies for improving the efficiency of employees and as well as of the organisation for enhancing the future growth.

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