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 employs over 238,000 people in over 28000 locations worldwide. The company has a wide range of food products and beverages to meet the demands and requirements of customers and the market. The 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 a person who is very knowledgeable in their field and who knows how to lead people in times of need. A leader is responsible for structuring and managing the task for achieving the desired goals and objectives of the company. These monitor the work and performance of low-level employees. Leaders define the plans and policies for workers, which were formulated by the management.

Managers:

Managers are responsible for formulating effective plans and policies to execute and evaluate future business activities after assigning roles and responsibilities to their workers based on their skills and capabilities for achieving desired goals and managers (Giegerich, 2010). There are many departments in Starbucks that 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 Starbucks.

Roles of a Leader:

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

Roles of a Manager:

• Formulating policies and plans: Before executing future business activities, it is important for organizations to have suitable plans and policies that direct their workforce to perform in the right direction. Therefore, the managers here play an important role in formulating effective decisions and plans after getting feedback from their employees so as to get maximum positive outcomes in the near future.
• Monitoring and controlling: Managers control and regulate all business operations and activities effectively with the motive of providing quality products with the help of utilizing available resources in an optimum manner (Grant, Wong, and Trautrims, 2017).
• Providing training: The managers of Starbucks should be required to conduct training programs in order to the employee's skills and capabilities. Evaluation of employees performance should be carried out by 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 help them in bringing more innovative and creative ideas and strategies that will help Starbucks achieve success and growth in the future. 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 lead 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 leaders should need to have good motivation skills and are responsible for providing motivation and guidance to the employees for getting better results. 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.

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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, 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 for 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 stable to moderate change for the organization, 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 the launch 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 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 systematic and effective manners. Therefore, the top authority of Starbucks should identify such factors which impact 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 et. al., 2016).
• Situational theory: This theory states that leader need to adopt various styles of leadership on the basis of nature of problems that arise 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 the effectiveness of the leader and managers depends on their style of leadership, which is to be implemented by them, which fits with the situations that arise. The leadership style in such theory is either task-oriented or people-oriented. Task-oriented is related to achieving the goals of a company, while people-oriented is related to building interpersonal relationships. 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 style exists in managers for a very long period of time and is broadly used by companies for training leaders and managers for improving their performance.
• Weakness: This theory has limited studies and research for confirming the assumptions.

These different leadership theories play an essential role in the development of a leader. The main theories of leadership are situational, contingency, and system styles of leadership, which affect 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 the company identifies the change in the preference and demand of the customers, it should accordingly adapt themselves by improving the existing product and present to the customer as a new alternative product in order to sustain itself 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 work together to create and define the goals of the organization to achieve. The objectives must comply with the resources available in the organization.

TASK 3

3.1: Key approaches to operations management

Organization plays an 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 that are to be delivered consist of the best quality that the company serves to the desired customers for satisfying their needs and requirements. Basically, companies concentrate on a total quality management approach for producing quality-based products and services for fulfilling customers' 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 the stock management process where the company concentrates on managing and controlling stocks from the production process. It leads to improved efficiency and reduced costs or waste. So the 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 costs as well as waste in the production department because it provides support to the department in generating the 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 that help customers 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 to carrying out activities will always be helpful in spontaneous improvement in the performance of the organisation in terms of capacity and outcomes. It is concerned with various procedures and methods for implementing strategies and focuses on improving performance and results. Various operational functions are described below:

• Control and Distribution System: The 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 has proven to be effective for the company.
• Process design: The process of production is very necessary for a company. The design of this process must be in a structured 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 demand.
• Logistics and inventory management: Logistics and inventory management are 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 the management of time and product as it results in an 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 products is necessary for Starbucks to deliver their quality products on time and under the right conditions (Shuxin, 2011).

TASK 4

4: Dimensions of the Contemporary business environment

Environment refers 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 is described as the approach of business that contributes to sustainable development by bringing economic, social, and environmental benefits to its stakeholders. The leadership and management at Starbucks play a great role in the context of CSR. The company must adopt short-term goals that are considered beneficial for the company.
• Culture is defined as ideas or social behaviour of people at a particular place. The culture of an organisation effects the business directly, as the companies are identifying the culture of a specific place and producing products based on the culture of that place. Culture also plays an important role in operations management, as at the time of the 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 the principals of an individual's behavior. Values are considered a necessary factor in Starbucks, as the products and services of the company are developed and improved after identifying the values and beliefs of the customer of a place. In operations management, values are considered important elements to decide the standards of the production.
• Ethics: For following 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 that is done by following 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 individual that has the stake in the company. Therefore, it is the responsibility of each company to meet their expectations. Consumers are the primary stakeholder of a company who expect quality products from the organization at a low price. company must ensure that their expectations 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 Starbucks. Different theories and models of leadership, along with the importance and value of operations management in achieving organisational goals, have been discussed in the report. Further, the internal and external factors that impact the operational management and decision-making of leaders and managers of Starbucks have also been analysed. These factors together greatly affect the business environment, which can be minimised by the management of Starbucks by implementing necessary strategies and policies for improving the efficiency of employees as well as of the organisation for enhancing future growth.

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