Unit 4 Management and Operations Assignment - Amazon

LO 1 and LO 3

Introduction

Operation and management are the key factors of strength in an organization. The management and operations assignment - Amazon report will discuss the role of management and leadership in organization along with quality and waste management in workplace. The report will present the theories and models of leadership and cost of quality. The management and operations assignment - Amazonreport will discuss the Amazon organization in term of operational strengths and weakness through the role of managers to meet the changes and capacity management. The report will present the recommendation to improve the management in workplace.

1  Roles of management and leadership

Management is the process of getting together the resource so that objectives can be achieved in effective and efficient manner. Management means to reduce the wastage of resources and to increase the attainment through high utilization of resources. Management is a hierarchical order of responsibilities and work distribution to achieve the objectives. The main role of management is to plan the objectives, managing resources, lead the people and control the work to accomplish the objectives effectively. At other side, leadership is more centric to motivate the people of the organization to follow the strategies of management. Leadership is liable to enhance monitor the implication of organizational strategies and objectives through the workforce. Leadership is required to understand the working environment and to prepare the wining strategies to accomplish the work in effective way (Mondy and Martocchio, 2016). The measure of work progress is also the job of leaders.

Figure 1: Role of management

(Source: role of management, 2016)

2 Difference between leadership and management functions

Management and leadership functions are quit related but have difference to solve the problems in workplace.  Kotler has defined that management is the administrative unit whereas leadership is innovative workforce to accomplish the strategies of management via people of organization. Management has function to plan and organize the resource for the objectives but leadership is related to accomplish the plan in effective manner through the arrangements of management. Function of the management is to focus on the system and structure but leadership is much more about the through put from the people (Hendry, 2012). Leadership functions include the motivation, internal strategy to deliver the work, performance management etc but management is about the resource allocation, achievement of objectives, planning of strategies to sustain etc.

3 Analysis of management by objectives

Drucker has defined the management by objectives as a model to define the objectives of management and employees in clear manner so that they can work effectively. The model emphasizes the distribution of work and responsibility among management and employees. Management by objectives is effective as it enhances the participation and commitment from employees to be agreed on the accomplishment of objectives from management. However the model requires the effective support from the top management. The model and concept also has the impact of effectiveness of management to distribute and clarify the objectives. The employees also may require training and skills to understand and contribute in management objectives (Dias, 2016). Al though, the employee participation helps to achieve the objectives in innovative manner.

4 Three management roles theory

Management may have a number of roles in workplace but Mintzberg has classified the roles into three main categories:

Interpersonal role: it involves the behavioural relationship of management with other employees of the organization. In interpersonal role, management work as the figurehead to ensure the right implication and use of power of employees to accomplish the work. The management also work as leaders to encourage the employees to enhance the productivity and performance through moral support. The liaison role of management helps to communicate with employees for better improvements in organizational operations.

Figure 2: Three management roles theory

(Source: Three management roles theory, 2016)

Informational role: management also work as the monitor to govern the performance and productivity along with disseminator and spokesperson. Manager distributes the work and responsibility and guides the employees to understand their objectives and role in workplace.

Decisional role: management needs to handle the disturbance in workplace along with decisions on the resource allocation (Armstrong and Taylor, 2014). Management has the role to decide the entrepreneur approaches to accomplish the work through scopes and negations.

5 traits of leadership and leadership styles

Traits theory of leadership is based on the characteristics of leaders as the theory promises the concept of ‘leaders are born not made’. The common leadership traits define the leader as a personality with high power of motivation, honesty, confidence, cognitive ability and emotional maturity. Knowledge of business, high effort and innovation in work are some other traits to differentiate the leader from other employees in Amazon organization. However, the traits theory may have difference prospective to determine the success and effectiveness. Two leadership styles are:

Autocratic leadership: managers have total authority and power to making decisions in business operations rather expecting the input from others. This leadership style is effective to monitor the employees closely and to make decision in time to meet the competitive advantages but the leadership may lack the applicability due to less integration of employees.

Figure 3: Leadership styles

(Source: leadership styles, 2016)

Democratic leadership: participation of employees is expected to make decision with managers of Amazon organization. Individuals’ ideas and thoughts are used to enhance the performance and effectiveness in work but it is time consuming and all employees may not be capable to participate in managerial work (Goethals.et.al.2014).

6. Hard management skills and soft leadership skills

Management needs to analyse the performance of the employees and to plan the strategies to meet the business objectives of the organization. Management skills are also required to manage the organizational structure and responsibility in Amazon organization. Hard skills of management cover the capabilities to measure performance, to take decisions and to structure workplace in term of employees and assets. Management needs to posses the capabilities to solve the problems and to understand the changes taking shape in Amazon organization. At other sides, soft leadership skills are communication, self-motivation, team building and working (Daft, 2014). The leadership skills should be good in real time problem solving along with better understanding with business objectives and strategies.

7. Three transformational processes in operation management

Transformation processes are required in Amazon to meet the changes in customer demands and market trends. Operation management can implement the transformation through three processes:

Redesign process: Entire operation management or part of it can be redesigned to meet the changes. Amazon has special sales and products to attract the customers on occasions so that demands and services may need the changes to perform the work in effective manner. The internal operations may be redesigned to produce more sophisticated work for customer satisfaction.

Development process: Amazon can use the development process to transform the operation management. Social and technical skills of employees can be development in workplace to promote the culture towards performance and high productivity (Avolio and Yammarino, 2013). Human resource management and asset management can be empowered to develop the strengths in operations.

Figure 4: transformational processes

(Source: Three transformational processes, 2016)

Leadership process: the employees need the motivation and guidance to accomplish the business objectives so Amazon offers the effective leadership to keep the employees motivated and innovative in work.

8. Quality and four cost of quality

Quality means the excellence in something in comparison of similar things. In case of Amazon, quality means to deliver the customer satisfaction through the desired products and services in effective time. The managers in Amazon organization has to deal with four cost to achieve the objectives effectively:

Prevention cost: cost associated with business operations to prevent the quality form being downgrade is prevention cost of quality. Investment on planning, implementation and control for quality is example of prevention cost.

Appraisal cost: cost associated with measuring and monitoring the quality in workplace is appraisal cost. Cost of quality audit and verification is part of appraisal cost.

Internal failure cost: this is the cost required to remedy the internal failure to produce the quality services and products (DRURY, 2013). It includes the cost of failure analysis, waste management, scrap and rework for quality.

9. Total quality management

Managers in Amazon organization are liable to control the quality of the work and to deliver the customer satisfaction. The role of the managers is to manage the performance and improvements in products and services towards the customers. The managers in Amazon also need to evaluate the process to simplify the approaches to accomplish the business objectives. Managers need to make the processes standards to enhance the total quality of the organization operations. Improvements in work culture to understand the customer demands and market trends are also the job of managers to support the total quality management in organization. Managers in Amazon also have the role to optimize the use of resources to match the overall objectives of quality in services (Bjørnenak and Helgesen, 2013).

10. Just-in-Time approach and waste reduction in operations

Amazon organization uses the approach of just in time in production departments to reduce the waste and to enhance the efficiency in inventory management as goods and products are ordered to keep in inventory on demand. In this manner, inventory for the goods can be used effectively to store the variety of products. Inventory management cost can be reduced with just in time approach. Waste is also reduced with proper forecasting of demands and consumptions in operations. The organization uses the approaches to recycle and reuse the products to reduce the overall waster from the operations. Products are refurbished to improve the quality and to minimise the waste in organization (Goetsch and Davis, 2014).

11. Capacity management in operations

Managers in Amazon organization can adjust the capacity management with the help of three methods: strategic planning, incentive blocking and incorporating issues in capacity management.

Strategic: Amazon managers use the strategic capacity management to mitigate the throughputs for the information technology related resources. The strategic approach is required to control the capacity of process to meet the present and future demands in operation with the concept of on demand production.

Incentive blocking: the outcome from the process of technical operations is suppressed to block the excess of production so that inventory, management and quality cost can be handled according to demands.

Incentive adjustment: this method is used to adjust the processes and operations to adjust the productivity and quality in organizational services so that customer satisfaction can be met. It is required to optimize the use of resources to adjust the capacity management (Oakland, 2014).

12. Conclusion on role of managers and leaders

Amazon organization is effectively working to deliver the services and products to customers as the managerial unit is accomplishing the role to lead the organization. The planning and organization of resources and strategies for organizational management and growth is mirror of managerial skills and capabilities available in Amazon. The managers are effective to control the resources and to measure the performance so that customer satisfaction is enhancing. Leaders are high professional and skilled to motivate and support the employees to deliver the objectives in time (Stark, 2015). The productivity and performance indicate the effectiveness of leaders in organization to accomplish the work in Amazon.

LO2 and LO4

1. Introduction of Amazon organization

Amazon organisation started the appearance as online book library in 1994. Later the organization has introduced the service in retail products and services along with manufacturing of mobile devices. The organization has employment for 280 thousand people to serve the customer in retail services online. The organization offers the products in almost every section to cover the global market. The reliability and customer support from Amazon is the mark of continuous growth in customers and market coverage. The organization also has the affiliation programs along with merchant partnership to generate the revenue. Amazon also offers the cloud computing services with the name AWS. Merchant, advertisements and product promotions are some of the subsidiary function of amazon.com (Rice, 2013).

Figure 5: Amazon logo

(Source: Amazon, 2016)

2. Department of work in Amazon

I am working in the department of customer support and relation in which I need to manage the information and to respond the customer for their queries. The department of customer support and relation handle the information about the customer accounts and their orders through the website and application. The department serves the other departments and operations by sharing the customer information for queries and features. The operation management works on the analytical results produced by customer relation department so that customer requirements and expectations can be included in online services. Operations of the organizations are prepared on the demands and expectations of customers collected in customer support department (Giacalone and Rosenfeld, 2013). The department helps to align the operations towards high performance.

3. Background of management team

Managers in customer relation department of Amazon organization are highly skilled and experienced to accomplish the objectives under the challenging environment. Management team has broad understanding of business knowledge and structure to lead the employees in productive work culture. Communication skills along with achievement drive are good to lead the changes. The team is diverse from the culture but collaborative to support the each other in business decisions to empower the organizational growth. The team has effective understanding and interpersonal relations along with proper knowledge of operations to present the work in innovative and creative manner (Shafritz.et.al.2015). Team is dynamic to thrive in the problems in operations as the experience of team is good to determine the scopes and threads in long term prospective.

4. Strengths and weaknesses of managerial approaches

The department of customer relations and support in Amazon has strengths in managers in term of better resource allocation and communication. The managers are effective to allocate the resources in dynamic manner so that competitive advantages can be met in time with quality. Managers have good understanding of market changes and customer behaviour to determine the long term strategies to define the operations. The communication skills and approaches to encourage the employees to enhance the productivity and quality is effective but the managers are facing the issues to decision making process as it is difficult to make decision as an autocratic leader when changes are being rapid in operations. The decision process is also not expecting the participations of employees for quick decision making (Du.et.al.2013). The approaches of performance management are also not effective to generate the possible optimistic throughputs.

5. Three roles and duties of management in organization

The management of the department needs to accomplish the objectives defined by the top management by presenting the strengths and weaknesses against the objectives. Management team also has the role to staff the skilled and experienced employees to simplify the effort and cost to accomplish the work in time. Management team is liable to complete the objectives of organization with performance. Team needs to collect the information about the resource utilization and arrangements to support the organization to determine the long term objectives. The information forwarded from the management team is used in other departments to prepare the products and services. For instance, the production department uses the customer behaviour to produce the desired features in products (Hall, 2013). In this manner, management has role of planning on objectives of organization, controlling on resources to deliver the results and measure of performance to enhance the loyalty in services.

6. Occasion description as evidence of management strengths

On last Christmas, the sale of electronic items has increased dramatically so that customers’ queries and feedback are started later in January. The increased work of customer support and delivery system, managers started to follow the management theories and models to meet the demands on exceed delivery. The contingency theory is used to take the decisions on the basis of situation in workplace. The managers moved from system approach to contingency due to dynamic requirements in customer support. As results the approach has appeared in term of quick response to customer for their orders and delivery related queries. The classic model of management was replaced with the change management model to enhance the productivity and performance. The employees were managed with motivation and proper guidance to meet the changes in work approaches (Landis.et.al.2014). The overall performance of the managers was effective to react in time for customer relationship management.

7. Leadership styles

In that special occasion, managers have used the theory of autocratic and transformational leadership to manage the work and responsibility. Managers have used the autocratic leadership style to save the time and cost on employee enrolment in decision making. Managers used the power of knowledge and experience to make the best decisions according to situations in operations. The autocratic leadership was effective to make the quick and single handed decision authority in workplace during the changes in business operations and objectives. The impact of changes in operations were also encouraged the managers to use the transformational leadership in which employees were inspired and developed according to objectives of organization. Transformational leadership style was effective to create the dynamic vision for skills of employees to perform the variety of work (Rice, 2013). With the power of transformational and autocratic leadership managers have achieved the changes in customer market and objectives in business.

8. Types of transformation process

Transformation process is used to conquer the failures and weakness to meet the changes in organization. In change management managers uses the dynamic arrangement of employees according to skills so that they can be used as the input in situational demands to achieve the benefits. The transformational process ahs three types: input, output and monitoring. The employees are trained and development for the quality and performance during the transformational process. The efforts are also measured to ensure that the resources are capable to deliver the desired objectives effectively. The output process of the transformational process is used to achieve the maximum through put with the use of inspiration and moral support to employees (Kerzner, 2013). Managers in Amazon use the training and development as input process and achieved the productive resources through continuous monitoring and control.

9. Impact of adjustment for capacity management

Capacity management in Amazon has made some adjustment over time to meet the changes and demands of market. However the impact of adjustments is seen in some positive as well as negative prospective as described below:

Positive impact: the cost of inventory management and quality audit has reduced with the reduced production according to reduced demands in market. In this manner, Amazon has saved the cost on wastage management also.

Negative impacts: However the sudden increase in requirements has impact the organizational operations and performance. The sudden increase in demands of products and services of specific kind has influence the work management and cost on operations. Managerial changes and leadership impacts are seen in the form of less integration of employees in decision making process (Bjørnenak and Helgesen, 2013).

10. Recommendations for future improvements in management

The overall management in operations is effective to accomplish the present requirements and objectives effectively but there are some changes possible by considering the future operational objectives of organization. Amazon organization needs to improve in the following areas.

Staffing: the process of staffing is not accurate to handle the operations as demanded in market. The organization can chose the detailed and dedicated process to staff the employees on roles and responsibilities in workplace. The employees are less effective to understand the actual objectives and approaches to deliver the customer satisfaction and they are using random non-standard approaches to engage customers in market. Proper training and development can resolve the issues and sharp the skills of employees.

Communication: There is communication gap among managers and employees in workplace. The organization needs to establish the communication channels through formal and informal methods like meetings, events and questionnaire (Daft, 2014). It will help to engage the employees in decision making and encourage them to enhance the productivity through moral support.

Conclusion

The report has been discusses the role of managers and leaders in business along with their functions to lead the objectives of organization. The operational functions have been discussed with the leadership styles, quality management and theories to manage the workplace. The report has been concluded the details about the organization and its approaches to manage the operational objectives. The report has been presented the strength and weaknesses of managers in Amazon organization for various leaderships and capacity management approaches.

References

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