Management And Operation Of Two Sisters Food Group

Answer :

MANAGEMENT AND OPERATION

Introduction:

The dynamic business environment requires an efficient management and operation so sustainability can be achieved. For attaining the sustainability in the organisation, it is highly imperative to get leaders that are more efficient and the managers because they help any company to achieve the business objective by aligning the human resource with more efficiency.  Managers and leaders conduct all management related tasks and help company to conduct their operation successfully. To resolve different risks in the organisation, management and leaders apply several theories so the risks can be adequately mitigated. This assignment provides an extensive view regarding the roles as well as responsibilities of the management and leaders for the 2 Sisters Food Group, which is one of the UK, based Food and Drink Company. 

Task 1: Case problema) Definition and comparison between the characteristics as well as a role of the manager and leader:

A leader is a person who provides instruction or direction to a group of individuals for the achievement of certain business-related goals. To be a good leader any individual must have different characteristics such as confidence, innovativeness, and communication capability, an ability to delegate the tasks, real confidence, and positive attitude etcetera (Torka et al. 2010). On the other hand, management can be described as the procedure that helps to control or deal with people or the things. The  2 Sisters Food Group' management has different characteristics such as accountability, an active and positive attitude to run their organisation, good patience, cultural affinity, effective skills to prioritise tasks, empathy etcetera. All level managers of the two Sisters group play a crucial role in the success of the company because their organisational success is completely dependent upon the utilisation of the resources to achieve the pre-decided goals of the company. 

There are several roles that the leader of 2 Sisters food group generally is playing that are, they motivate employee in the company so they can take tremendous work pressure. Along with that, a leader builds effective employee morale, guide employees with effectiveness, set a clear vision to influence employees. Moreover, leaders create an efficient team working environments and help 2 Sisters food group to make effective business decisions.

In their organisation, management mainly plays three different types of a role such as decisional role, interpersonal role and the informational role. Among those roles, in a decisional role the managers of the two sisters group perform four different types of roles such as handler of the conflict, allocator of the resources, negotiator and the entrepreneur (Mayfield and Mayfield, 2012). For playing their interpersonal role, the managers of the 2 Sisters group interact with both the people who are on the inside of the company and the people who are in outside of the company. To play this role, the manager plays three different types of the role such as the liaison role, figurehead and the leader. On the other hand, managers are also associated with the monitoring of all of the operational related tasks so that it can be effectively fulfilled. Moreover, managers are also associated to share different operation and sales related information with the higher-level management of the 2 Sisters group. Managers of the two sister’s food group are also associated to represent their organisation with the outside person so an effective brand image of a company can be established.

b) Application of the role of leaders and the function of the manager:

The management of 2SFG is supportive, and they also provide an excellent compensation to their worker. However, recently, they have faced strike from the union of their worker. It is seen that employees of them are involved in the strike because they want to change their working conditions. In order to resolve the conflict situation in the organisation, the managers and the leaders takes an effective and effective decisions so that they can achieve a sustainable business condition (Wayne et al. 2013). It is seen that the primary role of the leader is to motivate employees and communicate employers. Therefore, as a responsible employer, the leaders have taken several steps so the production of the company can be remained unaffected. The leader has communicated the representatives of the employees so that the leader can make the employees to understand the negative side of a strike with effective communication and motivational skills in order to close the strike. Before the involvement of the higher-level managers, the leaders have tried to communicate with the employees, but it is seen that they were strict with their objective to achieve their intended wages. Then the managers have involved themselves in managing the strike in the 2SFG. As stated by Lin et al. (2014), the function of the managers is the organising, staffing, controlling, leading and planning. It is seen that in order to control the condition in the organisation managers have agreed on the proposal of the employees so that they can achieve the unaffected production unit.

Another problematic condition was created in the 2SFG due to the conflict between the individual and the entire group. It is seen that in the manufacturing unit of the 2SFG there are some employees who are more capable of doing their job with effectiveness. Therefore, they think that as they are more capable so that they deserve more than the other employees do. Therefore, a conflict creates among the employees and the group of employers. In order to resolve the condition in 2SFG, the leaders of the company must play an effective role. The leaders must act as the philosopher and guide with that employee by utilising the experience and intelligence so that the leaders can guide the employee. It is seen that the achievement of the own goal of an employee cannot achieve the organisational goal entirely (Sosiket al. 2014). Therefore, the leaders must effectively communicate the employee to make him/her understand regarding their goal and individual goal of the company so that the employee cannot make mistakes regarding that. Here the leading capabilities of the manager are important to tackle the situation.

c) Application of different models and theories regarding the approach of leadership including the system leadership, situational leadership and the contingency in a different situation:

It is seen that 2SFG has recently implemented a change in their poultry system to generate more outcome. Therefore, in order to implement the change they have faced a huge resistance from the employee because they have implemented a technological advancement in the poultry firm regarding which their present employees are completely unaware. Therefore, they can resolve the condition by applying the effective leadership strategy and appropriate theory. Therefore, in order to address the conflict condition in the company, the leader must apply the contingency theory. Among different contingency model, the leader of the 2SFG should apply the path-goal model (House, 2011). By applying this path-goal model, a leader can affect the performance level as well as the motivational level by aligning the path to conducting the job with organisational objective, removing several obstacles of the performance and offering the rewards to achieve the goal regarding performances. In order to handle this emergency condition, the leader can adopt any leadership style. Along with the path-goal model, by applying the Hersey-Blanchard model in this contexts, it can be said that the leadership style must be selected based on the level of maturity of the employees so that this leadership style can be effectively accepted by them. In order to implement this situational model, the leader of 2SFG can adopt participating, telling, selling and delegating styles (Gupta, 2015). To inform the employees regarding the technological advancements, the leaders need to follow the telling style and tell the employee to cope with the changes. On the other hand, in order to work in the changed environments, 2SFG must adopt the delegating style.

It is seen that in 2SFG, conflicts among employees are created when they feel that they are providing their best effort to the organisation and do not achieve the sufficient recognition. Then problem among the individual and whole group may be generated. In order to resolve the problem regarding the conflict between the individual and total group can be solved by applying the system leadership theory. In order to resolve this problem and to create an effective relationship with employee networks of the trust and deep listening power among leader is imperative (Karapetrovic, 2012). Along with that, the leader should have the capability to resolve the short-term problem to create long-term value. Therefore, here the leader of 2SFG must counsel the employee who is suffering from a superiority complex and motivate him so that the employee can provide more value to the company for achieving recognition from the company. 

d) Analysis and differentiate between the function of the manager and role of leaders by applying different concepts as well as theories:

The main role of leaders in 2SFG is to communicate and motivate employees with effectiveness and guide employee so they can achieve the organisational objective with effectiveness. Therefore, in order to facilitate this, any leader must apply the behavioural theory and align the employees with the organisational objective by applying different leadership style such as democratic, autocratic and laissez-faire leadership style. The function of the manager is to control different conflict in the organisation (Lugo and Gucinski, 2010).The manager can control the conflict by contingency theory. In order to control the conflict in 2SFG, managers can implement the appropriate leadership strategy according to the maturity level of employees and align them effectively to increase their productivity. Along with that, managers also lead their employees; therefore, in order to lead the employee and achieve an effective outcome from them, transformational leadership is important. This is because; this kind of leadership motivates the worker to achieve an effective goal by changing ten perceptions and expectation. 

e) Strength and weaknesses of different approaches:

In order to resolve the conflict regarding the change, the contingency theory and situational leadership are applicable. The main strength of the contingency theory is it is tested and reliable approach to explaining how leadership in any organisation can be achieved. Moreover, this theory can help 2SFG to apply the most effective leadership strategy to resolve any issue (Foodmanufacture.co.uk, 2016). There are several weaknesses of this theory; it is very complex to apply in the practical situation. Moreover, it is difficult to facilitate empirical testing. By applying the situational leadership style in 2SFG, they can achieve better employee performances and awareness among leaders. However, this leadership theory creates some confusion among employees. In order to resolve the conflict, 2SFG also have implemented the system leadership style, the main advantage of this leadership style is precise definition of the tasks and clarity in the purposes (House, 2011). Moreover, it has certain weaknesses that mainly include a fear of low level of morale, lack of creativity and increasing level of turnover.

Task 2: Case problema) Key approaches to the operation management and the role that managers and the leaders play:

Different key approaches of the operation management are the just-in-time approach, total quality management approach, capacity management, waste management approach etcetera. 2SFG can achieve an effective and operational organisation by having effectiveness in those operational processes. The term total quality management is associated with the continuous improvement of the quality of processes as well as systems in 2SFG so that they can achieve an effective operation management. Here the role of managers is that they are associated with the initiation as well as an implementation of the TQM by aligning the human resource in the organisation so that effective performance can be achieved (Drucker, 2011). TQM require some budgets so here the task of the managers and the leader is assessing the budgets that are required for to achieve total quality management. In TQM, the role of the leader or manager is assisting the employees to implement the total quality management in 2SFG. For implementing the TQM in the company, the leader must follow an effective leadership strategy so that they can understand the requirement of TQM in the company and help the management to implement this approach.

In order to achieve an efficient operational department, it is required for the 2SFG to follow the just-in-time approach, which is very much effective to boost the efficiency of theoperational department by minimising wastes in the company. It is seen that sometimes supply exceed the demand and as 2SFG supplying the food product so they can face huge losses because with the time food product might be wasted (Mintzberg, 2014). Therefore, for reducing the wastes, 2SFG must supply their product whenever required basis, because, it can help them to avoid wastes. Therefore, in order to achieve an effective just-in-time approach manager or leader must instruct the employees regarding how much product they need to supply in markets. 

Along with that, another approach of operation management is the capacity management. By applying effective capacity management in the organisation, 2SFG can balance their supply and demand. In this approach, a role of manager or leader is helping employees to facilitate problem identification regarding the capacity as well as demand and implementing changes regarding the capacity and the demand (Simon, 2015). Along with that, the manager must identify different external factors that affect the capacity management so that problem can be effective mitigated.

b) Value as well as the importance of the operation management to achieve the business objective:

Operation management helps any organisation to provide efficient services to customers, and it also helps the organisation to utilise the resources with effectiveness. Effective operation management provides some specification to the 2SFG so it can satisfy customers with cost effectiveness. Along with that, effective operation management assists the managers to utilise organisational resources with an efficiency that helps the company to achieve an effective amount of profit so that their business objective can be achieved in that way. Operation management utilises resources effectively because it minimises the losses and receiving the optimum effect from the resources. Along with that, by using the scarce resources of the 2SFG, they can improve the output of the company. Effective operation management helps the company to achieve more input from the limited output; therefore, productivity is increased in cost saving way. As stated by Russell and Taylor-Iii (2013), productivity can be described as the ratio of the output to the input. Therefore, by implementing the effective operation management; 2SFG can easily achieve the business objective.

c) Different factors within the business environment that affect operation management and decision making of managers and leaders:

As stated by Easterbrook and Fischel (2013), operational management can be defined as the administration of the practices regarding businesses for generating an effective level of efficiency within the company. Therefore, in order to achieve appropriate operation management in the 2SFG, effective decision needs to make by them. There are several factors in the business environment that can affect the operation management and decision making of the leaders and managers. The first factor is a return on investments, which is one of the factors that affect the profitability. Therefore, in order to achieve the great operation management, it needs to measure the return on investments and then an effective business-related decision must be made by the managers or the leaders to increase the profit level. In order to run 2SFG with more efficiency and to achieve the excellent operation management in 2SFG, it is mandatory to make business decisions by reviewing the brand impact. As stated by Chandy and Tellis (2012), any business unit make a different decision regarding where they need to advertise their brand, which pricing strategy they need to follow etcetera, all of the decisions have a different impact on the brand image. Therefore, 2SFG must make those decisions that do not hamper the brand image of the organisation and helps 2SFG to achieve a good operation management.

For example, it is seen that 2SFG can achieve an enormous amount of sales if they reduce their price by 50%, but after that, they will never charge the full price from the customers. If any business organisation can take one opportunity, then they may lose another chance. Therefore, it is up to the organisation which opportunity they will accept because different opportunity provides different types of result. Therefore, before deciding which opportunity will be taken by the organisation, it is important for the2SFG to evaluate which opportunity can provide excellence operation management to the company. Along with attitude of the manager or leader regarding the risk or uncertainties, affect the business decision making and enterprise management. Some leaders do not want any risks in processes so that in order to make a superb operation management; they always accept those processes that involve fewer amounts of risks (Amihud and Lev, 2010). Along with that, the expectation of the decision maker, a talent of the decision maker and the time constraint effect the decision making of the manager or leaders as well as operation management.

d) Improvement of the efficiencies of managers and leaders to meet the business objectives:

The business objective of the 2SFG is to achieve the excellence profit level (Nsafd.co.uk, 2016). Therefore, in order to achieve this high level of outcome, the managers and leaders must implement the six sigma tool and lean. Lean is one of the strategies regarding the production that helps any organisation to save the costs by eliminating wastes regarding the production. However, for removing wastes, it is mandatory to align the employees with effectiveness so that they can eliminate unnecessary wastes by reviewing the supply and demand with more effectiveness. As stated by Marquis and Huston (2014), six sigma is one of the methods that improve the process by focusing on the statistical method so that number of defects from any process can be reduced. Therefore, in order to identify the cause of the defects, the leaders and managers must provide effective training to the employees so they can identify the cause more easily and remove it. The leader must motivate employees so they can provide more effort to their company. This approach of the leaders can help the company to reduce more operational cost by removing defects with more appropriateness.

e) Analysis of how different influences the wider community and the business environment:

The business environment is the external and internal factors that affect any business. Return of investment affects the business environment and the wider community. If any organisation achieves a great ROI, then business environment and the community at large affect in a less significant way. This is because; business is already producing the profit (Russell and Taylor-Iii, 2013). Along with that, if any organisation has a good brand image then the wider community getting influenced to buy a product from the company and the business environment also does not possess much impact. Along with that, the attitude of the leader also affects the business environments. If any leader has an opinion to avoid risks, then the organisation cannot suffer from any external factors. Therefore, the ability of a leader to avoid risks helps the company to achieve financial sustainability to which any community is getting attracted.

Conclusion:

The above discussion concludes the fact that any organisation can achieve the sustainability if they have competent and experienced leaders or managers. In order to achieve a high level of productivity an effective operation management approach is important. For the achievement of the effective operation management, the leader and manager must play a major role so they can align the human resource towards the objective of the company. However, in this operation management process, following effective quality is mandatory because it helps the organisation to achieve competitive advantage.