Q
Chapter
12
Contingency Theories of
Leadership
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before
one has data.”
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Introduction
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Leadership is contingent upon the interplay of all three
aspects of the leader-follower-situation model.
The four theories reviewed in this chapter share several
similarities:
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They are theories rather than someone’s personal opinions.
They implicitly assume that leaders are able to accurately
diagnose or assess key aspects of the followers and the
leadership situation.
With the exception of the contingency model, leaders are
assumed to be able to act in a flexible manner.
A correct match between situational and follower
characteristics and leaders’ behavior is assumed to have a
positive effect on group or organizational outcomes.
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The Normative Decision Model
The level of input subordinates have in the
decision-making process can and does vary
substantially depending on the issue at hand.
 Vroom and Yetton (1973) maintained that leaders
could often improve group performance by using
an optimal amount of participation in the decisionmaking process.
 The normative decision model is directed solely
at determining how much input subordinates
should have in the decision-making process.
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Decision Quality and Acceptance
Vroom and Yetton believed decision quality and
decision acceptance were the two most important
criteria for judging the adequacy of a decision.
 Decision quality means that if the decision has a
rational or objectively determinable “better or
worse” alternative, the leader should select the
better alternative.
 Decision acceptance implies that followers accept
the decision as if it were their own and do not
merely comply with the decision.
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The Decision Tree
Figure 12-1
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Factors From the Normative Decision
Model and the Interactional Framework
Figure 12-2
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Issues with the Normative Decision Model
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Questions could or should be placed in another part of the
model.
There are no questions about the leader’s personality,
motivations, values, or attitudes.
The Leader-Follower-Situation framework organizes
concepts in a familiar conceptual structure.
There is no evidence to show that leaders using the model
are more effective overall than leaders not using the model.
The model views decision making as taking place at a
single point in time, assumes that leaders are equally
skilled at using all five decision procedures, and assumes
that some of the prescriptions of the model may not be the
best for the given situation.
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The Situational Leadership Model –
Leader Behavior
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Task behaviors are defined as the extent to which the
leader spells out the responsibilities of an individual group.
Relationship behaviors can be defined as how much time
the leader engages in two-way communication.
Relationship behaviors include:
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Listening
Encouraging
Facilitating
Clarifying
Explaining why the task is important
Giving support
The relative effectiveness of these two behavior
dimensions often depends on the situation.
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Situational Leadership
Figure 12-3
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The Situational Leadership Model –
Follower Readiness
 Readiness
refers to a follower’s ability and
willingness to accomplish a particular task.
 Readiness is not an assessment of an
individual’s personality, traits, values, age,
etc.
 Any given follower could be low on
readiness to perform one task but high on
readiness to perform a different task.
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Concluding Thoughts about the Situational
Leadership Model
The only situational consideration is knowledge
of the task, and the only follower factor is
readiness.
 Situational Leadership is usually appealing to
students and practitioners because of its
commonsense approach as well as its ease of
understanding.
 Situational Leadership is a useful way to get
leaders to think about how leadership effectiveness
may depend somewhat on being flexible with
different subordinates, not on acting the same way
toward them all.
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Factors from the Situational Leadership
Model and the Interactional Framework
Figure 12-4
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The Contingency Model
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Some leaders may be generally more supportive and
relationship-oriented, whereas others may be more
concerned with task or goal accomplishment.
The contingency model suggests that leader effectiveness
is primarily determined by selecting the right kind of
leader for a certain situation or changing the situation to
fit the particular leader’s style.
To understand the contingency theory one must look first at
the critical characteristics of the leader and then at the
critical aspects of the situation.
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The Least-Preferred Coworker Scale
The scale instructs a leader to think of the single
individual with whom he has had the greatest
difficulty working and then to describe that
individual in terms of a series of bipolar activities.
 Based on their LPC scores, leaders are categorized
into two groups:
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Low-LPC leaders (primarily motivated by task)
High-LPC leaders (primarily motivated by relationships)
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Situational Favorability
Situational favorability is the amount of control the
leader has over the followers.
 The more control a leader has over followers, the
more favorable the situation is, at least from a
leader’s perspective.
 Three sub-elements in situation favorability:
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Leader-member relations
Task structure
Position power
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Contingency Model Octant Structure for
Determining Situational Favorability
Figure 12-6
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Prescriptions of the Model
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Leaders will try to satisfy their primary motivation when
faced with unfavorable or moderately favorable
situations.
Leaders will behave according to their secondary
motivational state only when faced with highly favorable
situations.
Instead of trying to change the leader, training would be
more effective if it showed leaders how to recognize and
change key situational characteristics to better fit their
personal motivational hierarchies and behavioral
tendencies.
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Factors from Fiedler’s Contingency Theory
and the Interactional Framework
Figure 12-8
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The Path-Goal Theory
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The underlying mechanism of the path-goal theory
deals with expectancy, a cognitive approach to
understanding motivation where people calculate:
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Effort-to-performance probabilities
Performance-to-outcome probabilities
Assigned valences or values to outcome
Path-goal theory uses the same basic assumptions
as expectancy theory.
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The Followers
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Path-goal theory contains two groups of follower
variables:
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Satisfaction of followers
Followers perception of their own abilities
Followers will actively support a leader as long as
they view the leader’s actions as a means for
increasing their own level of satisfaction.
 Followers who believe they are perfectly capable of
performing a task are not as apt to be motivated by,
or as willing to accept, a directive leader as they
would a leader who exhibits participative behavior.
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The Four Leader Behaviors of the
Path-Goal Theory
 Directive
leadership
 Supportive leadership
 Participative leadership
 Achievement-oriented leadership
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The Situation
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Path-goal theory considers three situational factors
that impact or moderate the effects of leader
behavior on follower attitudes and behaviors:
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Task
The formal authority system
The primary work group
These variables can often affect the impact of
various leader behaviors.
 Path-goal theory maintains that follower and
situational variables can impact each other.
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Examples of Applying Path-Goal Theory
Figure 12-10
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Concluding Thoughts about the Path-Goal
Theory
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The path-goal theory assumes that the only way to
increase performance is to increase follower’s
motivation levels.
The theory ignores the roles leaders play in selecting
talented followers, building their skill levels through training,
and redesigning their work.
Path-goal theory provides a conceptual framework to
guide researchers in identifying potentially relevant
situational moderator variables.
Path-goal theory illustrates that as models become more
complicated, they may be more useful to researchers
and less appealing to practitioners.
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Factors from Path-Goal Theory and the
Interactional Framework
Figure 12-11
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Summary
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The four contingency theories of leadership:
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Normative decision model
Situational leadership model
Contingency model
Path-goal theory
All four theories implicitly assume that leaders can
accurately assess key follower and situational factors.
None of the models take into account how levels of stress,
organizational culture and climate, working conditions,
technology, economic conditions, or type of organizational
design affect the leadership process.
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