Management and Leadership in Manufacturing Industry

Content

1. Introduction

2. Explanation of management and leadership
2.1 The role and qualities of manager
2.2 Leadership and leader qualities
2.3 Distinctions and interrelationships between managers and leaders

3. Internal elements of management and leadership
3.1 Product and Technology
3.2 Managerial activities
a. Planning
b. Organizing
c. Controlling
3.3 Human resources management

4. External influences

5. Conclusions

References

1. Introduction

The world today and especially the business world are changing rapidly. Globalization, increasing competition, shortening product lifecycle while extending product complexity, variety and quality are only some issues, which characterise this. Every company is influenced by these changes thus it is a challenge for the managers to find the best way to cope with it. This assignment will therefore explain and discuss how to manage and lead successfully within manufacturing industry. The chapter 2 deals with declaration of management and leadership while the internal elements and external influences of management and leadership have been investigated in chapter 3 and 4 respectively.

2. Explanation of management and leadership

Before the issues management and leadership can be discussed there should be a clear understanding what management and leadership are and what distinguish them. This will be explained in the following chapter.

2.1 The role and qualities of manager

Management is often described as “getting things done through other people”. Armstrong and Stephens (2005a) have extended this to “Management is deciding what to do and then getting done through the effective use of resources”.

There are several authors, like Fayol (1916), Griffin, (2005) and Daft (2003) who provide a following definition of management. Management is a set of activities, including planning and decision making, organizing, leading and controlling, directed at an organization’s resources, like human, financial, physical, and information resources, with the aim of achieving organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner. This definition shows that the management also includes leading, this however will be discussed in the next section as the role of management and leadership are different. This definition is a classical view of management. There are however author, who disagree with this. According to Armstrong and Stephens (2005b) this classical view dividing manager’s time orderly into these activities does not represent what managers really do as the real manager’s work is being carried out in circumstances of variety, turbulence and unpredictability.

To cope with this and to be successful manager need a scope of different skills. These are (DuBrin, 2000a):

- Technical skills – understanding of methods, processes, procedures, or techniques
- Interpersonal skills – ability to work with people, build cooperative effort in the unit
- Conceptual skills – ability to see the organization as a whole, includes also system skills.

The interpersonal skills are one of the most important as the managers have to deal with the people who are not like machines predictable and easy to control.

To be a good manager it is necessary not only to have appropriate skills but also the right personality thus not everybody can be a successful manager. Pedler, Boydell and Burgoyne (1986) researched what qualities are possessed by successful managers. These are:

- Command of basic facts
- Relevant professional knowledge
- Continuing sensitivity to events
- Analytical, problem solving, judgement making skills
- Social skills and abilities
- Emotional resilience
- Proactivity
- Creativity
- Mental agility
- Balanced learning habits and skills
- Self – knowledge.

The management guru, P. Drucker (2003) differentiates three tasks, which management has to perform to enable the function and contribution of management. These are:

- fulfilling the specific purpose and mission of the company
- making work productive and the worker achieving
- managing social impacts and responsibilities.

As already stated, managers should be also leaders as they always have to deal with people. Thus management includes leadership, which will be explained in next section.

2.2 Leadership and leader qualities

Leadership is defined by Babcock (1991) as ”a process of obtaining the cooperation of the others in accomplishing a desired objectives”. So leadership means to inspire people, to give them a strong vision of what future could be. A successful leadership also means that people follow the leader and give their best performance. To do this a leader should also possess certain qualities. The most important qualities, mentioned by Adair (1997) are those expected or even required by the people are being led. Without these it would be impossible to lead because of lack of credibility. He also defines following qualities which a good leader should have:

- Enthusiasm, a quality which is fundamental feature for leader
- Integrity, a quality that makes people trust one
- Confidence, self – confidence is preliminary to becoming a leader
- Toughness, because of their high standards leaders are sometimes uncomfortable
- Fairness, to treat individuals different bur equally
- Warmth, caring for people is essential
- Humility, willingness to listen and a lack of an overweening ego.

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It should be noted, that skills and qualities which a good leader and also a manager should have could be different in different situations depending on company structure, task, staff features etc. Also different will be the leadership style. According to DuBrin (2000) there can be differentiated four styles which depend on abilities and motivation of employees (picture 1).

These are:

- Telling, leader provides specific instructions and closely supervises performance
- Selling, leader explains decisions and provides opportunity for clarifications
- Participating, leader shares ideas and facilitates in decision making
- Delegating, leader turns over responsibility for decisions and implementations.

However in reality it can be that the leadership style is different at some times or in some groups of employees. It could also be considerable that there is not a certain style but a mixture of some of these leading styles.

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