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Category: Contingency Theories of Leadership

  • Contingency Theories of Leadership 3

    In the last byte, we looked at the concept of Least Preferred Coworker and the scale used. In today’s byte, we look at the situations factor’s influence in Fiedler’s Contingency Theory.

    In the beginning of our discussion on Fielder’s Contingency Theory, we had mentioned that there are three dimensions that influence the leader’s style of leadership. These are:
    1. Task Structure: The degree of clarity, or ambiguity, in the work activities assigned to the group. This includes the number and clarity of rules and regulations and procedures for getting the work done.
    2. Position Power: The authority associated with the leader’s formal position in the organization. This includes the leader’s legitimate authority to evaluate and reward performance, punish errors, and demote group members.
    3. Leader-Member Relations: The quality of interpersonal relationships among a leader and the graph members. The quality of leader-member relationships is measured by the Group-Atmosphere Scale, composed of nine eight-point bipolar adjective sets.
    A favorable leadership situation is one with a structured task for the work group, strong position power for the leader, and a good leader-member relation. An unfavorable leadership situation is one with an unstructured task, weak position power for the leader and a moderately poor leader-member relationship. Between these two extremes, the leadership situation has varying degrees of moderate favorableness for the leader.

  • Contingency Theories of Leadership 2

    In the last byte, we began our discussion on Fiedler’s Contingency Theory. In today’s byte, we explore it a bit deeper in this attempt.

    Fiedler classifies leaders using the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) Scale. This scale asks the leader to describe the least preferred coworker using a sixteen eight point scale bipolar adjective sets. The leader would mark the bank that is most descriptive of the least preferred coworker.

    The leaders are then classified – one who describes their least preferred coworker in positive terms (ex: pleasant, efficient, cheerful etc) is classified as high LPC, or relationship oriented; and those who describe their least preferred coworker in negative terms (ex: unpleasant, inefficient, gloomy etc) are said to be having a low LPC, or task-oriented, leaders.

    Note that, this technique is a projective technique which asks a leader to think about the person whom he or she can work least well (the least preferred coworker or LPC). This itself makes the score controversial element of the theory as the projective technique would have an extremely low measurement reliability

  • Contingency Theories of Leadership

    In the last byte, we looked at a comparison between the leadership grid and the Ohio State Research. In today’s byte, we begin our discussion on the Contingency Theories of Leadership.

    The roots of Contingency Theory of Leadership arises from the belief that leadership style must be appropriate to a particular situation. The way one could interpret these theories is – “IF the situation is ____, then the appropriate leadership behavior is _____ “. We shall begin our discussion on these theories with an introduction to Fiedler’s Contingency Theory in this byte and continue this further.

    Fiedler’s Contingency Theory assumes that leaders are either task-oriented or relationship oriented, depending on how the leaders obtain their major gratification. The theory thus, proposes the fit between the leader’s need structure and the favorableness of the leader’s situation determine the team’s effectiveness in work accomplishment.

    Task-oriented leaders are primarily gratified by accomplishing tasks and getting work done, while relationship-oriented leaders are primarily gratified by developing good, comfortable interpersonal relationships. Thus, the effectiveness of the type of leaders depends on the favorableness of the situation.
    The favorableness of the situation has three components:
    • Leader’s position power.
    • Structure of the team’s task
    • Quality of the leader-follower relationship.