Trần Hương Giang_10160106_MO_A1

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 CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 3
MAJOR FINDINGS .............................................................................................................. 4
Task 1: Define and compare the different roles and characteristics of a leader and a
manager ............................................................................................................................. 4
1. Main definitions ..................................................................................................... 4
2. Compare and contrast: leader with manager/ leadership with management ......... 4
3. The roles of leaders and the functions of a managers in case of IDGVV ............. 7
4. Difficulties that IDGVV is facing with and identify the causes ........................... 9
Task 2: Apply different theories and models to analyze and evaluate roles of leaders and
functions of managers apply in different situations at IDGVV ...................................... 10
5. Theories and models of leadership approach ...................................................... 10
6. How roles of leaders and functions of managers applied in different situational
contexts ........................................................................................................................ 14
7. The effectiveness of their leadership approaches and the impact from managers
to employees ................................................................................................................ 14
RECOMMENDATION FOR THE CASE OF IDGVV...................................................... 17
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 18
REFERENCES .................................................................................................................... 19

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 INTRODUCTION

Management and Operation is a subject that includes an excessive amount of information about the
importance of having leaders and managers in a business. By giving a clear knowledge, theories and apply
in real situations, the subject has helped the students to compare and contrast leadership with management
in specific situation as well as find some problems to solve it.
In this assignment, I have the opportunity to find more information of how to compare the differences
between the role of a leader and the function of a manager. Moreover, I can apply their roles and functions
in the situation stayed in IDG Ventures Vietnam (IDGVV).
According to IDGVV, this business the first technology venture capital fund in Vietnam, with over $100
million under management. It can be seen that due to the strengths and improvements of IDGVV, the ways
to manage and operate are becoming more and more important among its business. Some strengths and
weaknesses about leadership and management will be described in the assignment.
In task 1, I would like to give the definitions of leader and manager, compare and contrast main features
leaders with managers, then apply those theory into the situation of IDGVV, to realize what the situation
has become.
In task 2, I would like to analyze the roles of leaders and functions of managers in given situation in IDGVV
and how the situation affect its roles and functions. Finally, I would like to comment and give some
solutions to IDGVV so they can improve more in the near future.

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 MAJOR FINDINGS

Task 1: Define and compare the different roles and characteristics of a leader and a manager
1. Main definitions
(a) Leadership and leader
According to Northouse (2007, p3), “leadership” is a process whereby an individual influences a group of
individuals to achieve a common goal. “Leader” is a person who make a process to influence others in order
to reach the goals and objective by applying the leadership skills.

(b) Management and manager

Rosemary Stewart (1967) has described “management” as the activities of getting things done with the aid
of people and resources, and “manager” is a person who performs “management”. Also, Mary Parker Follet
(1992), who has known as an influential 20th century writer, defined “management” as “the art of getting
things done through people”, which means “manager” can be described an “artist”.

2. Compare and contrast: leader with manager/ leadership with management

Although the roles of managers and leaders sometimes can be interchangeable to get the staffs and workers
work for the business, their roles and functions are performed differently.

(a) Similarities:
These are some similarities among leader (leadership) and manager (management), which made people
confused between the roles of the two positions.

- They both work with people and through others effect to influence others

- They have the goals and make others achieve the goals

- They create the functional structure

- They make the changes and decisions

(b) Differences between the roles of a leader and functions of a manager

A leader
According to John - Creating a sense of direction
Kotter (The Leadership - Communicating the vision
Factor, 1988) - Energizing, inspiring and
motivating
Create vision: persuade the
objectives and make visions, goals
A manager
- Planning and budgeting
- Organising and leading
- Controlling and problem-solving
Planning: the manager selects the
objectives for organization and give

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 and values in long-term orientation
for the organization
Execute strategy: The leader needs
to make processes in both short and
long term, so the initiatives of the
organization can be changed into
work and action.
Coach potential: The leader has the
responsibility to push the strengths
and releases the weaknesses from
Roles of leaders and staffs and workers, therefore
functions of managers improve the performance and grow
the organization.
Inspire trust: motivate and energize
all the staffs and workers so they
are willing to work with high
standard and performance for the
organization
Develop the objectives from
managers and set the main goals
Provide directions in group and
teams
Carry out the ideas and ways from
Characteristics the manager
Focus on people
Inspire the staffs and workers to
work in the organization
Motivate and energize people to
work
the plans, programmes and procedure
that beyond the policies and give it to
workers in order to achive the
objectives
Organising: the manager divides and
give a clear structure into small tasks
and workload and make a schedule of
work with work allocation
Commanding and co-ordinating:
Fayol called this functions as
“maintain activities among the
personnel.” The manager instructed
the subordinates and harmonize the
activities of individuals and groups,
apply different approaches and
resources to reach the objectives of the
organization
Controlling: The manager monitors all
the work and activities of individuals
and teams, groups to make sure that
they are following the plan with high
standard and performance.
Set the objectives of the company
Give direction to the groups and teams
Create the ideas and ways to improve
the organization
Focus on reports, outputs and things
Planning and budgeting the work in
the organization
Direct the workload to the people
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(c) The roles of managers (Henry Mintzberg’s theories)
In Henry Mintzberg’s book published in 1989, he has also given the opinion that “management is more
art than science.”

Managerial roles are divided into 3 main categories: Interpersonal roles (managing through people),
Informational roles (managing by information) and Decisional roles (managing through actions).

(Source: Albertsuckow.com)
- Interpersonal roles:
 The figurehead: ceremonial duties – create meeting, greet visiting dignitaries, take important
partners or customers to have lunch or dinner.
 The leader: work with subordinates, motivate and encourage people.
 The liaison: maintain the relationship with staffs, workers, partners and customers
- Informational roles:
 The monitor: obtain the information to the staffs through communication, including both verbal
and written.

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  The disseminator: when receiving the information from top manager (for example: the CEO),
transmitting it to the staffs.
 Spokesperson: share the information with people who are not in the organization.
- Decisional roles:
 The entrepreneur: create ideas and projects to improve the organization.
 The disturbance handler: deals with the problems and correct it.
 The resource allocator: decide what and where to apply the source, make the plan, schedules
and budgeting.
 The negotiator: negotiate with the partners and customers through appointments.

Although it can be seen that due to Mintzberg’s ideas, “leader” is a part of managerial roles, it should be
distinguished from a “real leader”. As mentioned above, manager works mostly through things, however it
does not mean that a manager will never work with human resources. In this theories of the 10 managerial
roles, especially for interpersonal roles, as recognizing the roles of a manager is sometimes the same as a
leader, Mintzberg has taken “leader” as the name for the roles. A real manager, in the opinion of Mintzberg,
will take on more than just one roles from the three categories.

3. The roles of leaders and the functions of a managers in case of IDGVV

In the given case of IDGVV, there has Mr. Michael Vu, CEO of IDGVV and Mr. Quang, the fund
manager. Through the case study, some of the activities from the CEO and the fund manager has been
shown, which are all within the scope of the theories presented.

(a) CEO of IDGVV – Mr. Michael Vu

What he has decided
Group the employees into teams with a leader in
one team
Give the teams the goals and objectives
Make the meeting among all the teams
Motivate and energize the employees by giving
them the freedom to create the work process and
the empowerment in their work
 The employees are interested in what they can do and they have high energy to bring good
performance to the organization
What he let the employees do
Let the employees decide the way their team work
Let them make their own way to reach the goals
and objectives
Let them give comment on other teams’
performances and suggest ideas to improve
Actions in each team are decided themselves
The employees share the works in their teams,
have the responsibility with their job
The employees can make snap decision

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 (b) Fund manager – Mr. Quang
What he has done What he let the employees do
Decide what the employees have to do Not allowed to make the decision
Not allowed them to swap their job between a team
Give the employees routine tasks Require them to follow all the tasks given
 The employees want to move to other teams because they feel like learn nothing during the work
and they do not have freedom to give the opinion

(c) Compare the roles and functions of leader and manager in the case of IDGVV
Looking at the activities of CEO and fund manager in IDGVV, they have done their jobs following the
definitions of roles, functions and characteristics of a leader and a manager.
CEO – Mr. Michael Vu Fund manager – Mr. Quang
Level of management Executive management Middle manager
(Operative manager)
Roles of leaders and Create vision Planning
functions of manager Execute strategy Organising
Inspire trust Controlling
Interpersonal roles
- The figurehead
- The leader
Roles of managers - The liaison
(according to Informational roles Informational roles
Mintzberg’s theories) - The monitor - The monitor
- The disseminator
Decisional roles Decisional roles
- The entrepreneur - The entrepreneur
- The resource allocator - The disturbance handler
- The resource allocator
As can be seen, while the fund manager of IDGVV has the roles, functions and characteristics of a manager,
the CEO of IDGVV has both roles and characteristics of a manager and a leader.

Both of them apply the decision-making process and work with people in order to make sure that the goals
and objectives can be reached. They also create the strategies and actions for the employees with the hope
that the employees can work with high standards and performances.

However, it cannot be misunderstanding that the CEO and the fund manager of IDGVV are doing quite
same jobs just because they have some similar characteristics in their jobs.

For the CEO, what he has done focused more on long term orientation and human resources. For long
term orientation, he has divided the employees into small teams and let the team leader focused on only the

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work in that team, and what the team do will be decided themselves. Different teams also have the
opportunities to give opinion to others so the performance of the organization can be improved. Mr. Michael
Vu has applied all the roles in the interpersonal roles, means he has a high awareness on people and
communicating with them. As the staffs in IDGVV has commented, the way he led the organization make
them feel satisfied and motivate them a lot to involve themselves in the workload of the company.

For the fund manager, he focused more on short term orientation and the tasks of the organizations. He
brought the routine tasks for the employees, required them to do the tasks without any questions allowed
and did not let the staffs in his team swap the job and focus only on the work. By his way, he can finish the
tasks, but at the same time, he makes the staffs feel uncomfortable, lack of free space and they complain
that doing given tasks make them not feel able to absorb new knowledge.

4. Difficulties that IDGVV is facing with and identify the causes

According to IDGVV, since they are the first technology venture capital fund in Vietnam, with an excessive
amount of work with the entrepreneurs and invest in more than 40 companies run in various kinds of
sections, it seems that IDGVV has much work to deal with.

The more work to deal with, the more difficulties to face.

(a) Difficulties in IDGVV

The CEO has divided the employees into small teams, which helps the employees focus more on their own
workload. However, this is a difficulty for the CEO to divide the tasks for the teams and follow the structure
of their work. With a large number of teams and groups in the organization, this will also be a challenge to
the team leader and the employees.

- What the CEO is facing:

Mr. Michael Vu has given many freedom for the employees when he let them choose their own way to run
the teams, make the plans and actions to reach the goals of organization and objectives of the teams. He
also let the employees make a decision when they are in rush. Although this sometimes can help dealing
with the situation, wrong decisions might bring IDGVV into troubles. The problems and mistakes will
take time to fix and the goals of IDGVV will be harder and longer to reach.

- What the fund manager is facing:

While the CEO let the employees great freedom, in contrast, the fund manager – Mr. Quang brings no
freedom to the employees in his team. As a team leader, it can be seen that he make all the decisions and
only let the employees do the tasks he gives. It cannot be denied that by this way, the work in his team will
be finished soon and he can completely control all the work in the team, he has made himself an excessive
amount of work to do and made the employees feel uncomfortable.

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 - What the employees are facing:

Due to the freedom in choosing the workload in a team, it can see that there might has the situation that
some employees will have to work more than others. Moreover, different teams with different structures
can lead to jealousy. For example, the employees work with Mr. Quang want to be moved to other teams
because they see more freedom and opportunities to develop than in his team.

(b) Identify the causes in the situation

According to the attitude from the employees in Mr. Quang’s team, it seems that the employees have high
awareness on showing their skills and knowledge, which can be seen in the characteristics of a high standard
employees.

Following Branham’s opinion (2005), he believed that good employees have high demand of being
recognized the abilities and achievements from their employers. Therefore, they would like to work with
high pressure and have the opportunities to work and contribute more for the organization than others.

Compared to the situation in IDGVV, it is clear that the fund manager has not given their employees any
of the chances to show off their abilities, which leads to the disappointment and unpleasant. However, if he
completely follows the way of structuring the organization like the CEO, it can also lead to control loosing
and time wasting.

To solve the situation, both the CEO and the fund manager need to find their way to balance and restructure
the strategy of IDGVV, in order to reach the visions and goals on time and still satisfy the good employees
in the organization.

Task 2: Apply different theories and models to analyze and evaluate roles of leaders and functions of
managers apply in different situations at IDGVV
5. Theories and models of leadership approach
(a) Leadership style and team management
Leadership or management style can be understood as the way the leader or manager handle their
relationship with the subordinates.

There are two main ways to classify the leadership style:

- By the orientation toward getting the job finished: wholly task-focused, which means high leader
control or wholly people focused, which means high subordinate discretion.
- By the approach used: in this classification, there are several popular theories and models.
 Huneryager and Heckman’s Theories (1972): Leadership style is identified with four main styles:

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 Dictatorial Manager/ Leader completely makes the decisions and enforces the employees.
Work can be done through requirements, threats and punishment.
Autocratic Manager/ Leader make most of the decisions, employees have less chance to
make consultation
Democratic Manager/ Leader involves the employees in giving consultations through
projects, assignments in order to make the final decisions
Laissez-faire Manager/ Leader let the employees make the decision and do whatever they
want. Empowerment is completely given to the employees.

 Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Continuum of Leadership (1973)

(Source: https://www.tutor2u.net)

The Continuum has shown that the leadership styles are chosen based on many factors, which include
characteristics. This is a simple model that presented how much freedom the employees received from the
manager. The more freedom for the employees, the less authority for the managers.

Comparing with the theories of Huneryager and Heckman mentioned above, there are relations between
the two theories:

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Autocratic Manager Democratic Manager

Tell Joins

(b) Situational leadership - Hersey and Blanchard’s model (1996) and Fiedler’s contingency (1967)
The situational approaches to the style of leadership have mentioned that the situation has a high affect to
the leader or the manager. This is why Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) claimed that there is no best style for
a leadership, there is only the art of choosing the right style in order to fit the situation.

(Source: http://blog.sukad.com)

In this model, there are four leadership styles : delegating, participating, selling and telling which are
suitable with different levels of supportive and behavior of the subordinates.

Leadership style Characteristics of followers Activities of the leader/manager

S1 M1 Make every decisions and structure all the
Telling Lack of knowledge and skills workload
Need to be pushed to work
S2 M2 Make the decisions, but try to motivate and
Selling Do not have enough encourage the followers so they can carry the work
knowledge and skills step by step
Want to do the tasks

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 S3 M3 Make the decision, but sharing this responsible
Participating Have the knowledge and with the followers, focus more on relationships and
skills, but not confident always work with the whole team
Want to deal with the tasks
S4 M4 Still take part in the monitor progress, but most of
Delegating Have the knowledge and skills the responsibility of making decisions are from
to work on their own, high followers, focus on relationship and improve the
confidence team’s skills
Have the desire to do the tasks

It can see that for style S1 and S2 are task-focused in order to getting the task finished, while style S3 and
S3 are people-focused so the leader/manager can pay more attention in the followers’ skills and abilities.

Compare with Fiedler’s contingency (1967), there are quite similar definitions. He claimed that the
effectiveness of leaders or managers is based on how they choose the leadership style due to different
situations. At the end of the theory, Fiedler has ensured that there are two main types of leader/manager,
which are task-motivated (in the situation 1, 2, 3 and 8) and relationship-motivated (in the situation 4, 5, 6
and 7).

(Source: http://skeptikai.com)

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 6. How roles of leaders and functions of managers applied in different situational contexts
(a) The CEO – Mr. Michael Vu: gives the empowerment to his employees
Following what the CEO has done (mentioned above in task 1) and based on Huneryager and Heckman’s
theory, it is clear that his leadership style in IDGVV is democratic. The CEO put less authority on the
decisions and work more on the relationship and structures between subordinates. And by comparing with
the Continuum of Tannenbaum and Schmidt, it can be seen that Mr. Michael Vu has completely applied
subordinate-centered leadership style and stayed in the right corner of the Continuum. This shows that
the CEO has high beliefs and expectations in the employees, which leads to the fact that most of the
decisions of tasks and structuring are made by his employees.

His leadership style and his interpersonal roles in management are easily recognized through his strategy
and human focused.

(b) The fund manager – Mr. Quang: make all the decisions himself
As mentioned the works from the fund manager in task 1 and following the theories of leadership style, it
can be identified that his leadership style in IDGVV is autocratic. Since he puts no choice of making
decisions on the employments and require them to completely follow his routine tasks, he has brought the
manager-centered leadership style into the highest level (which means his roles stayed in the left corner
of the Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Continuum). The fund manager prefers telling the followers and give
them very less chances to give consultation.

His leadership style and his decisional roles in management can recognized through all of his actions and
task-focused.

7. The effectiveness of their leadership approaches and the impact from managers to employees
In this part, I would like to apply situational leadership by using Hersey and Blanchard’s model and
Fiedler’s contingency to evaluate the effectiveness of the leadership approaches in the case of IDGVV.

First of all, I would like to simply analyze the situation in the case of IDGVV:

- There are many activities in IDGVV, and the CEO has divided the employees into teams so they
can work within a group of people and sharing their responsibility to reach the objectives.
- One fund manager in IDGVV – Mr. Quang, gives no chances for the employees in his team to make
the decisions and they are asked to follow their routine tasks only.
- Most of the employees are interested in their empowerment of the jobs when they can create
their own plans to work with each other, and they can make snap decisions.
- The employees from Mr. Quang’s team feel unpleasant because they cannot do anything but
following their tasks given by the manager.

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Therefore, in this case, one of the most outstanding that can be seen is the energy and interest of the
employees with their work. For those who satisfied with the structure of groups from the CEO, they involve
themselves a lot to deal with all of the tasks. For those who complaint about their team with Mr. Quang,
they show the desire to be shown off and to contribute more for IDGVV. It can be summed that the
characteristics of the employees in IDGVV are having the knowledge and skills and willing to do the
tasks.

Following the model given by Hersey and Blanchard, the employees in IDGVV can be classified in group
M3 or M4, which means the suitable leadership styles can be Participating or Consulting (somewhat the
same as Democratic style).

However, it seems that while the CEO is using style S4, means Consulting, the fund manager in this case
is using style S1, which means Telling.

(a) The CEO – Delegating style

- Strengths:
 Provide high motivation and commitment for team members
 Empowers the team members to take the initiative and turn it into actions
 Involves the team members in making decisions
 The quality of the decision may benefit from the input of those who do the work
 Encourages can easily come from communication.
- Weaknesses:
 Take long time to reach decisions and the goals
 May partly undermine the authority of the manager
 May further lengthen the decision-making process and harder the process than it could be
 May reduce the quality of the decisions

(b) The fund manager – Telling style

- Strengths:
 Quick decisions can be made without delayed
 This is the most efficient leadership style for highly-programmed work
- Weaknesses:
 Communications are one-way so there are limited feedbacks from the employees
 Lack of motivating and encouraging the employees to work harder
 Decision made by only the manager can lead to inefficient

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Moreover, due to the case mentioned, what this fund manager has done can also lead to jealousy between
the employees in his team with those in others. They are jealous because they do not have freedom to make
choices and decisions, as well as they have the lack of space to show their abilities and improve their skills.

It can be summed that the leadership approaches by the CEO of IDGVV has partly brought positive effects
on the employees with high motivation to their work, while the leadership approaches by the fund manager
seems not to be suitable with the organization situations so he cannot inspire his employees to work in the
best status. However, it should also be mentioned that the approaches by the CEO might lead to longer the
time to reach the organisation’s goals, what the fund manager has done can help finishing the work in the
most efficient way.

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 RECOMMENDATION FOR THE CASE OF IDGVV

In the case study of IDGVV, a research carried out by CMI has mentioned Theory X and Theory Y
developed by McGregor (1960) and the its result showed that most of the employees prefer the Theory Y
approach.

According to McGregor (1960), Theory Y claimed that a leader/manager should let the subordinates have
the freedom to control their work and tasks. What the leader/manager should do are to structure the
employees to work in an open environment, to allocate the tasks they need to do and balance the
relationships among the organization. The employees should have chance to be challenged, to take
responsibility for highly requirements and to be reward in time.

The CEO of IDGVV should pay attention to show his authority in making decisions, and involve himself
more in the work structure of the teams in IDGVV so he can always ensure that their work are in time.

On the other hand, although autocratic is a good leadership style, the fund manager of IDGVV should
change his mind and turn into the other style that can be suitable with the situation of IDGVV. Less focus
on task done and more awareness on the human resources can be a good way for him to both reduce his
workload and increase the motivation of his followers.

Moreover, leadership and management are two skills that should be trained all the time. IDGVV should
create more training course of leadership and management for the leaders and managers so they can adopt
with the innovation of the business growth. In fact, learning how to motivate and encourage people to be
willing to work under the leader/manager is also important.

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 CONCLUSION

In this assignment, I have the chance to have more knowledge about leadership and management through
theories and IDGVV situation.

First, I can differentiate between the roles of a leader and the functions of a manager. Although this position
can sometimes be interchangeable, it is clear that leaders and managers still have different roles and
characteristics.

Second, after finding many theories and model about leadership approaches, I can see various ideas and
opinions about this fields, and how they analyze and develop those theories are really impressive. What
interesting is about how the theories can classify the situation in the work environment and select the
leadership style that suitable with the situation.

Last but not least, for the case of IDGVV, I have the chance to apply the theories into a specific situation,
and besides differentiate the differences between the roles of a leader and the functions of a manager, I can
also comment on how the CEO and the fund manager impact on their organization, as well as identify the
problems and causes in IDGVV and give some possible recommendation.

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 REFERENCES

Branham, L. (2005). “The 7 hidden reasons employees leave”. New York, NY: Amacom.
Fayol, H. (1917). ‘‘Administration industrial in general’’. Paris: H. Dunod & E. Pinat

Fiedler, E. (1967).” A theory of leadership effectiveness”. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Hersey, P. & Blanchard, K. (1996). “Training & Development”. Alexandria.

Huneryager, S.G., & Heckman, I.L. (1967). “Human relations in management” (2nd ed.). Cincinnati, OH:
South-Western Publishing Co.

IDGVV (n.d). IDG Ventures Vietnam. (online). Available at: http://idgvv.com.vn/en/ [Accessed 26th 2018].

Kotter, J. P. (1987). “The Leadership Factor”. New York, NY.

Lawrence, P. R., & Lorsch, J. W. (1967). ‘‘Managing differentiation and integration”. Boston: Harvard
Business Press.

Mary, P. (1992). “Postmodern organizations Theory”. Organization Studies 13/1: 1-17.

McGregor, D. (1960). “The human side of enterprise.” New York: McGraw-Hill

Mintzberg, H. (1989). “Mintzberg on management: Inside our strange world of organizations.” New York,
NY: The Free Press.

Northouse, G. (2007). “Leadership theory and practice” (3rd ed.) Thousand Oak, London, New Delhe, Sage
Publications, Inc.

Stewart, R. (1967). “Managers and their jobs” (2nd ed.). Basingstoke, Hants, UK: Macmillan.

Tannenbaum, R. & Schmidt, W. (1973). “How to choose a leadership pattern.” Harvard Business Review.

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