Leadership and Management at the Coca Cola Company Essay -- Business M

Leadership and Management at the Coca Cola Company Business is an economic institution whose goal is economic Survival and whose activities are dominated by the profit motive. Its primary purpose is to create and satisfy a customer and make a profit. To achieve this purpose, business must be skilfully managed. Management is defined as the art of conducting and supervising a business or as using judgment in business affairs. A manager is one who actively directs, controls and manipulates his or her business environment in a manner that takes account of the risks involved in order to realize monetary gain. Successful business leaders have stressed that good management skills, whether in a large corporation or in a one-person business, are vital to the success of a business. Many small business people may be good at launching their venture, but weak in managing the development and later stages of the business. DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN A MANAGER AND A LEADER Leadership is just one of the many assets a successful manager must possess. Care must be taken in distinguishing between the two concepts. The main aim of a manager is to maximise the output of the organisation through administrative implementation. To achieve this, managers must undertake the following functions: * Organisation * Planning * Staffing * Directing * Controlling Leadership is just one important component of the directing function. A manager cannot just be a leader; he also needs formal authority to be effective. In some circumstances, leadership is not required. For example, self-motivated groups may not require a single leader and may find leaders dominating. The fact that a leader is not always required p... ...f management style involves empowerment. In this management style individuals and teams are given responsibilities and decisions to make, usually within a given framework. If anything wrong happens then the individuals and teams are then held responsible for the decisions that are chosen. With this type of management style it allows the manager to feel comfortable with other people in the organization making some of the decisions. Democratic managers will often want feed back from their employees on decisions being made. Democratic leaders listen and act on the opinions of the group. This type of management is good as it makes the employees happy and productivity is high. This is very good because employee's thoughts and suggestions are listened to by the business. This makes the employees seem as if they are respected and that their thoughts are valid.