Role Of A Manager In An Organisation Business Essay

“A manager may be a leader, a manager may not be a leader, but a leader may emerge who is not a manager.” This saying shows that roles of manager and leader not to be connected at all. However, for a business to be effective, managers must learn how to become leaders by developing effective leadership skills. A leader means a person that holds a dominant or superior position within its field, and is able to exercise a high degree of control or influence over others. A leader is one who has followers. ‘Followers’ follow leaders because they are influenced by the leader’s personality and share belief in the leader’s visions, goals and values. Leaders gain personal power through credibility. They can communicate their beliefs to team members, who understand that these beliefs will not alter or vary because of circumstances and will become the rock on which their working relationship can develop. Leadership is no longer the responsibility of a few senior managers and directors.

A manager is an individual who is in charge of a certain group of tasks, or a certain subset of a company. A manager often has a staff of people who report to him or her. As an example, a restaurant will often have a front-of-house manager who helps the patrons, and supervises the hosts. In addition, a specific office project can have a manager, known simply as the project manager. Certain departments within a company designate their managers to be line managers, while others are known as staff managers, depending upon the functionality of the department. A manager has a job to do and is required to fulfill it. Not essentially all managers are leaders. Managers may have an ideal leader whose style they may adopt. Leadership skills are generally inferred learnt and developed because of exposure, interaction and practice.

1.2 LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

Leadership may be seen in terms of creating and inspiring change. The leader does this by inspiring people, giving a sense of vision and providing a good example. Good leaders are made not born. If we have the desire and willpower, we can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience. This guide will help throughout that process. To inspire our workers into higher levels of teamwork, there are certain things we must be, know, and, do. These do not come naturally, but are acquired through continual work and study. Good leaders are continually working and studying to improve their leadership skills. They are not resting on their laurels.

Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Leaders carry out this process by applying their leadership knowledge and skills. This is called Process Leadership. However, we know that we have traits that can influence our actions. This is called Trait Leadership, in that it was once common to believe that leaders were born rather than made. These two leadership types are shown in the chart below.

While leadership is learned, the skills and knowledge processed by the leader can be influenced by his or hers attributes or traits, such as beliefs, values, ethics, and character. Knowledge and skills contribute directly to the process of leadership, while the other attributes give the leader certain characteristics that make him or her unique. Skills, knowledge, and attributes make the Leader, which is one of the four factors of leadership.

We must have an honest understanding of who we are, what we know, and what we can do. It is the followers, not the leader or someone else who determines if the leader is successful. If they do not trust or lack confidence in their leader, then they will be uninspired. To be successful we have to convince our followers, not ourselves or our superiors, that we are worthy of being followed. Different people require different styles of leadership. For example, a new hire requires more supervision than an experienced employee. A person who lacks motivation requires a different approach than one with a high degree of motivation. We must know our people. The fundamental starting point is having a good understanding of human nature, such as needs, emotions, and motivation. We must come to know our employees’ be, know, and do attributes.

Besides that, we lead through two-way communication. Much of it is nonverbal. For instance, when we “set the example,” that communicates to our people that we would not ask them to perform anything that we would not be willing to do. What and how we communicate either builds or harms the relationship between us and our employees. All situations are different. What we do in one situation will not always work in another. We must use our judgment to decide the best course of action and the leadership style needed for each situation. For example, we may need to confront an employee for inappropriate behaviour, but if the confrontation is too late or too early, too harsh or too weak, then the results may prove ineffective. Also note that the situation normally has a greater effect on a leader’s action than his or her traits. This is because while traits may have an impressive stability over a period of time, they have little consistency across situations.2 F.John Reh, 2011 This is why a number of leadership scholars think the Process Theory of Leadership is a more accurate than the Trait Theory of Leadership.

Various forces will affect these four factors. Examples of forces are our relationship with our seniors, the skill of our followers, the informal leaders within our organization, and how our organization is organized. Although our position as a manager, supervisor, lead, etc. gives us the authority to accomplish certain tasks and objectives in the organization which is called Assigned Leadership, this power does not make us a leader, it simply makes us the boss. Leadership differs in that it makes the followers want to achieve high goals which are called Emergent Leadership, rather than simply bossing people around.

The most important key to effective leadership is trust and confidence, which in top leadership was the single most reliable predictor of employee satisfaction in an organization. Besides that, effective communication by leadership in three critical areas was the key to winning organizational trust and confidence known as helping employees understand the company’s overall business strategy and helping employees understand how they contribute to achieving key business objectives. Sharing information with employees on both how the company is doing and how an employee’s own division is doing is also relative to strategic business objectives. So in a nutshell we must be trustworthy and you have to be able to communicate a vision of where the organization needs to go.

A principle of leadership which is important is to know you and seek self-improvement. In order to do this, you need to understand your be, know and do, attributes. Besides that, you need to be technically proficient. As a leader, you must know your job, and have a solid familiarity with your employees’ tasks. Leaders must set good example to their employees. If you are leader who can be trusted, then those around you will grow to respect you.3

1.3Role and Function of Manager

On the other hand, management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.4 Because organizations can be viewed as systems, management can also be defined as human action, including design, to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system. This view opens the opportunity to ‘manage’ oneself, a pre-requisite to attempting to manage others. Directors and managers have the power and responsibility to make decisions to manage an enterprise. As a discipline, management comprises the interlocking functions of formulating corporate policy and organizing, planning, controlling, and directing the firm’s resources to achieve the policy’s objectives. The size of management can range from one person in a small firm to hundreds or thousands of managers in multinational companies. In large firms the board of directors formulates the policy which is implemented by the chief executive officer.

In for-profit work, management has as its primary function the satisfaction of a range of stakeholders. This typically involves making a profit for the shareholders, creating valued products at a reasonable cost for customers, and providing rewarding employment opportunities for employees. In nonprofit management, add the importance of keeping the faith of donors. In most models of management/governance, shareholders vote for the board of directors, and the board then hires senior management. Some organizations have experimented with other methods such as employee-voting models of selecting or reviewing managers, but this occurs only very rarely. 3Article from http://www.nwlink.com/-donclark/leader/leadcon.html, accesses on 20 February 2011. 4 Lecture notes on Business Management by Mr. Joachim

Management operates through various functions often classified as follows:-

Planning – Deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next 5 years, etc.) and generating plans for action.

Organizing – (Implementation) making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.

Staffing – Job Analyzing, recruitment, and hiring individuals for appropriate jobs.

Leading/Directing – Determining what needs to be done in a situation and getting people to do it.

Controlling/Monitoring – Checking progress against plans.

Motivation – Motivation is also a kind of basic function of management, because without motivation, employees cannot work effectively. If motivation doesn’t take place in an organization, then employees may not contribute to the other functions (which are usually set by top level management).5 Article from http://www.leadership501.com/defination-of-management/21, accessed on 24 February 2011

CONCLUSION

In a nutshell, good leaders are made not born. If we have the desire and willpower, we can become an effective leader. Besides that, managers have the power and responsibility to make decisions to manage an enterprise. A manager has a job to do and is required to fulfil it. Not essentially all managers are leaders. Managers may have an ideal leader whose style they may adopt. He or she has to be able to cope with a lot of things that go on all at once. There are many parts that help make up a good manager. Some can come naturally to people and others have to work on them. Leadership skills are generally inferred learnt and developed because of exposure, interaction and practice.

1. Defination Cost Leadership/ the competitor

The two different organizations that compete on cost leadership strategy are Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and also Al Baik in Saudi Arabia. Both of these restaurants are dealing with fried chicken. Basically, if the business is of same basic, then of course leadership strategies of each business are very important. They need to take care of their customers by giving them the best service as they could to make them happy. They must also be careful of the prices of their goods so that customers will choose them.

1.1 Defination of KFC

KFC was first introduced by Colonel Sanders. His first franchise was in year 1952. Under new management, the first sale was for $2 Million. In 1980, there were more profit and expansion of KFC was carried out. Within 50 years, the profit went up to $ 7 Billion. In 1952, Col. Sanders started franchising his recipe door to door financed by his $105.00. Col Sanders had more than 600 franchised outlets in the US and Canada by year 1964. He sold his interest in his company for $2 million to a group of investors. In 1966, KFC went public. KFC was listed on the NYSE in 1969. Current Market Cap value on the NYSE is 7.2 Billion. A competitive marketing strategy in the international market focused on the Latin American countries is the reason why KFC can maintain a market leadership in the global fast-food industry.

Key to continued growth was to find, motivate, and retain hard-working and entrepreneurial managers and franchisees around the globe .In addition to short term profits, store managers were also responsible for building local public relations, maintaining employee morale, developing customer good-will, keeping tab on the competing chains and creating a legacy of special chicken cooking recipe. KFC had a refocused international strategy to grow its company and franchise restaurant base all over the world.

Their Competitive marketing strategy: was to developed three types of chicken, original recipe (pressure cooked) ,extra crispy (fried)and also tender roast (roasted) .Sweeping changes into the culture was initiated by the new management. This brings about demoralization to old KFC employees and even franchisees. Several restructurings led to layoffs throughout KFC, replacement of KFC managers with PepsiCo managers’ .Conflicts between KFC and PepsiCo cultures- this is manifested with PepsiCo’s stronger emphasis on performance rather than loyalty expressed by Col. Sanders to KFC employees over the years.

2.0 SWOT Analysis

2.1 Weaknesses

According to SWOT ANALYSIS, the weaknesses of KFC are as follows.KFC finds difficulty in entering the German market (culture incompatibility) .KFC sales stagnated. There was widespread discontent among the franchisees, some of whom felt the new owners did not understand the chicken business and were not providing leadership expected from a franchisor. Company stores floundered and become underperforming the franchised operations, further convincing franchisees that the company did not know its own business. (KFC HQ acquired them to company-owned) .Overseas expansion with the rapid economic growth and trend toward two-income families that had fuelled the growth of fast-food industry in the 1950s and 1960s were appearing in the late 1960s in the other country.

2.2 Strength

Primary objective is to take advantage of the potential growth in other countries, to establish a strong position and to develop their image. Key Success Factors are ever continuing cost savings through R&D, innovations and use of new technology to work efficiently. These success techniques will lower costs and increase profits in the industry. KFC uses an integrated low cost/differentiation leadership, since it can count on its brand name and original taste and recipes to be unique while at the same time compete on price using the benefits of cost savings from economies of scale.

1.3 Opportunities

Based on the analysis, we can conclude that they should start by solving their internal issues such as management and restaurant menu before thinking about expanding. They should work on the management issues to create a good atmosphere where employees are happy to work in. I certainly do not believe that by treating employees poorly, a company can be successful. They also need to make sure that their restaurants offer a diversified menu, provide their customers with quality food, excellent service and restaurant cleanliness. KFC should always listen to their customers and try to follow the new trends on the market in order to fully satisfy their customers. Otherwise, competitors will satisfy them and will eventually outperform you as Boston did with its grilled chicken.

1.4 Threats

Even though, KFC seems to have an emotional attachment to their original recipe that made their success, they definitely need to move on and develop new products that customers want in order to increase their financial performance and value. We have seen that Boston and Popeye’s are stealing customers away from KFC because they understood what customers wanted and started offering healthier items. KFC should certainly do the same and enhance their menu.

3.0 Defination Of Al-Baik

On the other hand, it is time to talk about another local business success story and how can we talk about successful organizations without talking about Al-Baik.

It is next to impossible that you are living in Jeddah or ever visited it without being to Al-Baik. The local fast food chain has been around since 1974. After 35 years by now, the restaurant is mainly operating in Jeddah with minimum number of branches in Makkah, Madinah, Yanbu and Taif. Arguably, Al-Baik possesses the highest market share and customer loyalty amongst its competitors especially in Jeddah; noting that when I say competitors, I mean international multibillion brands like McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut etc.

For those of you familiar with the debate surrounding Porter’s Generic strategies, Al-Baik is a living proof that you could follow a strategy that combines both differentiation and cost leadership. Although there are a lot of restaurants serving fried chicken, the quality and taste of Al-Baik are certainly unique and its prices are way below the average.

Al-Baik has very strong brand equity whether we are measuring it by evaluating the restaurants’ products or by studying its brand impact on customers. Al-Baik brand communicates strong messages of quality, fast service, trust, affordability, convenience, and social responsibility. Its management has been very smart emphasizing these values into the brand using different methods of advertisements, public relations, or even by spreading stories about the brand. The entrepreneurial story of its founder and how he struggled to raise his community awareness about eating outside the home which was strange back then and how he has been working alone in the restaurant preparing the food, serving it, and then cleaning the small shop are all meant to build some kind of connection with its customers. Also, some suspense and mystery would not hurt either; the secret chicken formula that is only known by few individuals is one of the most preferred stories amongst such food and beverages organizations.

Whether we are talking about fast service, servicescape design, or cleanness of the restaurants environment; Al-Baik is providing exemplary services in all of that. Even more, Al-Baik is one of the few restaurants that introduced items to the menu based solely on customers’ suggestions.

Al-Baik marketers are masters in choosing locations for their restaurants. One has never seen a branch of Al-Baik without it being packed with customers. The huge expansions they carried out in Jeddah have been built on population distribution analysis. That is why wherever you live in Jeddah now; there must be Al-Baik branch within your easy reach.

Al-Baik has always been known for its socially related campaigns. They have a regular presence in Hajj seasons providing free meals to pilgrims and they are periodically campaigning for environmentally related causes like banning smoking in their restaurants or preserving the city clean image. Furthermore, their active participation in the aftermath of Jeddah floods by providing free meals to those devastated by the catastrophe is one shiny example of how organizations could be interacting with its society.

Nevertheless, staying on the top is not an easy job. Al-Baik management has to deal with many issues to facilitate its growth. One of these important issues is on the mind of every fan who happen to live outside Jeddah; how much should they expand? Should they consider opening new branches in other cities at the Kingdom? What about being multinational or even global?

Moreover, how Al-Baik should respond to the growing concerns raised by healthy and organic foods advocates. And most importantly, how its managers are going to maintain its competitive advantages and how are they going to nurture its sustainability strategy.

As conclusion, the best selling food in my view is KFC. People nowadays has less time to eat since they are busy working. Therefore, they would choose fast food restaurants as their choice. Thus, the managers of these restaurants need to ensure on cost leadership and make sure they can get the best way to keep the price reduced. This is a marketing strategy in a way to attract customers. More customers make the business more powerful and expand fast.