Matakuliah
Tahun
: L0244 – Psikologi Kepemimpinan
: 2010
Contingency Theories of Leadership
Pertemuan 23 & 24
Introduction
• Leadership is contingent upon interplay of all three aspects
of the leader-follower-situation model.
• Similarities between the four theories:
– They are theories rather than 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 decision-making
can, and does vary substantially depending on the issue.
• Vroom and Yetton maintained that leaders could often
improve group performance by using an optimal
amount of participation in the decision-making 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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Normative Decision Model – Levels of
Participation
• The normative decision model was designed to improve
some aspects of leadership effectiveness.
• Vroom and Yetton explored how various leader,
follower, and situational factors affect the degree of
subordinates’ participation in the decision-making
process and, in turn, group performance.
• A continuum of decision-making processes ranging from
completely autocratic to completely democratic was
discovered.
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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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Vroom and Yetton’s Leadership
Decision Tree
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Concluding Thoughts about the
Normative Decision Model
• One could argue that 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.
• No evidence to show that leaders using the model are more effective
overall than leaders not using the model.
• The model also:
– Views decision making as taking place at a single point in time.
– Assumes that leaders are equally skilled at using all five decision procedures.
– Assumes that some of the prescriptions of the model may not be the best for the given
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situation.
Factors from the Normative Decision
Model and the Interactional Framework
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The Situational Leadership Model –
Leader Behavior
• Task behaviors: The extent to which the leader spells out
the responsibilities of an individual group.
• Relationship behaviors: How much time the leader engages
in two-way communication. Relationship behaviors include:
– Listening, encouraging, facilitating
– Clarifying, explaining why the task is important, giving support
• The relative effectiveness of the two behavior dimensions
often depends on the situation.
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Situational Leadership
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The Situational Leadership
Model – Follower Readiness
• Follower readiness: A follower’s ability and willingness
to accomplish a particular task.
• It is not a personal characteristic, but rather how ready
an individual is to perform 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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Prescriptions of the Model
• While combining follower readiness levels with the four
combinations of leader behaviors, four segments along a
continuum emerge.
– Along this continuum, however, the assessment of follower
readiness can be fairly subjective.
• A leader may like to see followers increase their level of
readiness for particular tasks through implementation of a
series of developmental interventions to help boost
follower readiness levels.
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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.
• It is a useful way to get leaders to think about how
leadership effectiveness may depend somewhat on
being flexible with different subordinates.
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Factors from the Situational Leadership® Model
and the Interactional Framework
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The Contingency Model
• Although leaders may be able to change their behaviors
toward individual subordinates, leaders also have dominant
behavioral tendencies.
• 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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Least-Preferred Coworker Scale – Motivational
Hierarchies for Low- and High-LPC Leaders
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Situational Favorability
• Situational favorability: 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:
– Leader-member relations
– Task structure
– Position power
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Contingency Model Octant Structure for
Determining Situational Favorability
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Prescriptions of the Model
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Factors from Fiedler’s Contingency Theory and
the Interactional Framework
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The Path-Goal Theory
• The underlying mechanism of the path-goal theory deals
with expectancy, a cognitive approach to understanding
motivation where people calculate:
– 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 Path-Goal Theory (continued)
• Leaders:
– Leaders may use varying styles with different subordinates and
differing styles with the same subordinates in different
situations.
• Followers:
– Satisfaction of followers
– Followers perception of their own abilities.
• Situation:
– Task
– Formal authority system
– Primary work group
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The Four Leader Behaviors of
Path-Goal Theory
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Interaction between Followers’ Locus of Control Scores
and Leader Behavior in Decision Making
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Examples of Applying Path-Goal Theory
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Factors from Path-Goal Theory and the
Interactional Framework
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Summary
• The four contingency theories of leadership:
–
–
–
–
Normative decision model
Situational leadership model
Contingency model
Path-goal theory
• They specify that leaders should make their behaviors
contingent on certain aspects of the followers or the
situation.
• All four theories implicitly assume that leaders can
accurately assess key follower and situational factors.
• They are all fairly limited in scope.
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Reference
•
Hughes., Ginnett., & Curpy. (2009). Leadership: Enhancing
The Lesson of Experience. 6 eds. McGraw-Hill. Boston.
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