The airline known as British West Indian Airways Limited, (BWIA) or fondly referred to as BWee by Caribbean natives was the brain child of a gentleman named Lowell Yerex who was born in New Zealand. The airline’s inception started out of the need for air transport between Britain and her colonies in the West Indies in the late 1930s, in particular Trinidad and Tobago. The question was, who had the entrepreneurial flair and the knowledge of flying to set up a Caribbean airline from scratch?

How does leadership differ from management?

Leadership and management are different approaches of inter-relationships with people.
It is important to differentiate the two by defining their role in order to understand their function. In Rick Joyner’s book, Leadership, Management. Joyner states, “Both leadership and management are required for the administration of almost every venture, but they must be recognized as separate, and kept within their spheres of authority” (Joyner, 1990, p11).

“Leadership is the process of influencing the actions of a person or group to attain desired objectives,” according to Douglas in her book, The Effective Nurse Leader Manager. Leadership can occur at any time when an individual attempts to influence the beliefs, opinions and behaviors of another individual or group of individuals (Hershey, P. and Blanchard, K., 1988). Leadership is a combination of intrinsic personality traits, learned leadership skills, and characteristics of the given situation. Joyner, further states, that leadership combines several characteristics to make one both perceptive and effective in accomplishing goals. The effective leader will not only have the vision to perceive the future, he will have the wisdom, courage, and determination to affect it. The function of a leader is to guide people and groups to accomplish common goals (Joyner, 1990). Leaders may not have formal authority granted by the group or organization but they are still able to influence others.

Now that we are at the end of the semester in management class, I have learned that there are many different kinds of management positions. I have also learned that there is much more to management than telling someone what to do. It is very hard work having a career in management because a person has to be very dedicated and have the ability to encourage others to become just as dedicated. While researching this project I had the opportunity to interview a local store manager of a well known retail store.

During this course several things have caught my attentions and allowed me to understand how the labor-management relations work, how it developed, and why is so important today. During this course I specially found interesting why some managers and unions resist to cooperate with each other.