What responsibilities do operations managers have?

The text divides the responsibilities of operations managers into,

Direct responsibilities the activities which are directly related to producing and delivering
products and services.
Indirect responsibilities the activities involved in interfacing with other parts of the organisation.
Broad responsibilities a wider set of tasks that involve scanning the business, social and
political environment in which the organisation exists in order to understand its context.
aturally the vast ma!ority of "lack et al is concerned with the direct responsibilities of operations
managers. #ll other text books in this area take the same approach. $owever, both the indirect
responsibilities of communicating with other functions and %especially& the broad responsibilities are
becoming increasingly important to operations managers. This relates back to the idea of buffering. #s
the traditional barriers between the operations function and the other functions of the business and the
business environment in general are being lowered, so operations manager must make decisions in the
light of the their internal and external environments.