Literature Review and Essay

The report will focus on McDonald's corporation which is one of the retail outlets based in the United Kingdom. It is one of the largest restaurants chains producing hamburger fast foods. It is important to note that the corporation serves about 58 million customers daily. Any chain of the restaurant under McDonald's runs through a franchise, as an affiliate or the corporation itself (Badal, 2017). The sources of revenues of McDonald's corporation are royalties, rent as well as fees paid by those who franchise the business and also majorly from sales from restaurants operated by the company. The company's main products are cheeseburgers, hamburgers, fresh fries, breakfast items, milkshakes, and soft drinks, among others. It should be noted that the Company was founded in California, the United States around the year 1954.

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Management and leadership are believed to be a very closely related term that is intentioned to achieve the goals of an organization through the company leaders who are applying their leadership abilities inaccurately and efficiently managing the company resources (Ansoff et al., 2019). These leaders are assumed and are required to implement various styles of leadership that are aimed at achieving the set strategic objectives of a company. Most importantly, leadership and management approaches should be considered by the leaders to ensure that company goals are positively accomplished. These management and leadership styles should not only be regarded as appropriate, but there has to be an essential application to achieve these organizational goals. The report, therefore, aims at analyzing various essential aspects related to management and leadership at MacDonald so that the strategic goals of the company are achieved (Badal, 2017). To be able to accomplish this analysis, the focus will be put towards understanding management and leadership concepts at MacDonald and the difference that exists between the two. This will be followed by the application of selected leadership theory in supporting the decision of McDonald Company. The report will also detail an assessment of management requirements at the corporation, and lastly, there will be a critical analysis of a management development program applied at McDonald Company.

Concepts of Management and Leadership

Management is the process that consists of planning, organizing, and controlling with the primary objective of influencing human action and to facilitate changes to achieve the set organizational goals and objectives. On the other hand, leadership refers to the process by which others are influenced by an individual to achieve organizational goals and steer the organization in a more organized and logical way (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). It cannot be denied that individual and organization's success is anchored on the management and leadership practices. Leadership is primarily not about titles, but instead, it's about the will and the ability to understand deeply when to influence people within an organization. It involves the use of an individual's actions to lift others and place them on their correct path to achieving great goals. When individuals have the will and desire to become good leaders, they need to develop in an endless process of self-learning, experience, and training. Even though leadership is learned, the individual's attributes and traits like values, ethics, beliefs, and characters among others can have a significant influence on the knowledge and skills possessed by individuals. Notably, some ideas about things we know better, do and we can be can effectively inspire a person who works at a lower scale to a higher level of teamwork. Instructively, this cannot be achieved naturally but through repeated work practices. Great leaders improve their leadership skills through continuous studying and working.

The managers usually make critical decisions in the organization and set-up target for the various branches of the organization especially at the beginning of every financial year to be achieved. This is a pointer that the organizational objectives and goals have been set and the workers are now set to work towards their achievement (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). Having these clear objectives enables the workers to work tirelessly work towards the improvement of sales in the case of organizations in the retail sector. Also, the number of new customers will increase when the leadership team introduces new products to the market.

It should be noted that managers form the most important team in any business activity and there is a general belief that managers are responsible for getting things fixed usually through other individuals. Managers often assist the workers given different roles in achieving goals by either providing supervision or working together with them. Conventionally, the term manager refers to different people in an organization, and they are usually given various job titles which include the word manager at the end, for example, project manager. Moreover, other workers may also be managers despite not having that title. To achieve organizational goals, owners of such organizations involve managers who act on their behalf (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). They are accountable to the shareholders and set goals for the organization on the activities of the company. Also, they are charged with the responsibility of making sure that the objectives of an organization are achieved and ensure that ethical values in the corporate are observed when dealing with customers, employees and other businesses. Management involves organizing and getting people together to meet goals through the efficient and effective use of limited resources. Managers often have a daunting task in laying down relevant resources to achieve the set targets. In light of this, they organize special training and conferences to enable workers to understand how they are fixed into the plan and work towards achieving it. Leadership is a vital function of management. Both management and leadership roles are generally much tied to human interactions where their attributes and traits are crucially needed. Additionally, at every level of management there exist management and leadership, but it is worth to note that each varies based on management ladder (Noe et al., 2017).

An example is where the board of an organization performs more leadership task while the head of a department seldom get involved in shaping what the next task should be. Furthermore, knowledge and skills often contribute significantly to the management and leadership process, and other traits usually provide the manager and the certain leader values that make them different. The organization's management and leadership process comprises constituting a proper vision and motivating people to perform tasks by aligning them with the vision through maintaining appropriate and consistent communication (Claussen et al., 2014).

There is a stark difference between a manager and a leader and being both is undoubtedly a viable concept. It should be noted that someone can be a phenomenal leader, but that does not follow that one will be an outstanding manager. The following are some of the differences between management and leadership:

The manager is charged with the task of organizing where he or she observes the underlying aspects of the organization's goals and controls workers and the flow of work within the business. In essence, the manager maintains a readily established structure to achieve objectives. By contrast, a leader innovates by coming up with new ideas and puts the organization into the path of embracing new ways of ensuring efficiency in the organization. A leader often possesses vital knowledge of the emerging trends that have the potential of taking the organization to new levels. This brings out the difference between leadership and management where leadership calls for forward-thinking of the leader while managers have a short range vision (Ansoff et al., 2019).

Managers are required to build control over workers where they are provided with an opportunity to enhance their knowledge and skills to make them make a positive impact on an organization. In light of this, the manager needs to understand their workers well to enable them to perform their tasks effectively. On the other hand, a leader sets the appropriate speed and tempo for the employees and strives to make subordinates to do their best. In leadership, the followers trust their leader. This is different from management where the managers, by nature of their job, control the employees (Northouse, 2018).

In leadership, leaders question the authority "what" and "why" and try to challenge the board to make decisions that promote the wellbeing of the team. Leadership to a larger extent need rational judgment on the part of the manager especially when there is a particular concern on the necessary improvement. Conversely, in management, the manager concentrates on seeking answers on the "how" and "when" questions (Noe et al., 2017). Managers are not majorly concerned with assessment and analysis of areas that require improvement. Primarily, they ensure that the laid down plans are correctly executed and more generally they do not attempt to create change but lean towards acceptance of the status quo.

In management, the managers establish and institutionalize work rules, standards, and processes. They put into consideration the need of the employees working under them and periodically involve them in making certain key decisions and react on viable suggestions to boost productivity in an organization. By contrast, in leadership, the leaders invent and put into practice new strategies and continuously work with employees to get the best out of them (Rodrigues et al., 2016). Also, one of the core functions of management is organizing, and managers often control a team intending to accomplish set goals. In contrast, in leadership, the leader has the essential ability to influence and motivate a group to make a notable contribution to the success of the organization.

It should be noted that management and leadership cannot be separated and whenever there is management, there is leadership. To inspire and motivate the team the managers need to have relevant leadership skills as one of their key attributes. Conventionally, in any organization there exist departmental managers and a host of leaders that work together for the achievement of objectives and goals of an organization. Also, every organization requires managers and leaders to work closely and complement each other in the execution of tasks for the growth of the organization.

Functions of management

As had been stated earlier, management involves the process of problem-solving to use resources of the organization in a manner that the mission and objectives of the company are achieved. It should be noted that these objectives are realized by four primary management functions (Noe et al., 2017). The first known function of management is planning. This involves the ongoing process of developing and coming up with the missions and objectives of the company alongside determining how they will be achieved. It is no secret that McDonald shares its concepts through its properly developed vision. Understandably, the vision statement of a company serves as the link between employees and the rest of the world. The vision statement aims to serve customers by offering them the best products at their convenience. It always clearly show the plans of the organization. It is wise to note that at McDonald, every worker knows and understands where they are going to and what their input is to the Company. It is no secret that the vision of the company is the binding force that enables workers to have a sense of p...