Contingency Theories of Leadership

2. 12 Contingency Theories of Leadership Chapter • “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” • ~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

3. Introduction – Contingency Models • 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.

4. The Normative Decision Model • The level of input subordinates have in decision-making can, and does vary substantially depending on the situation/issues. • 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Vroom and Yetton Five Different Decision Procedures • AI: Leader takes known information and then decides alone. • AII: Leader gets information from followers, and then decides alone. • CI: Leader shares problem with followers individually, listens to ideas and then decides alone. • CII: Leader shares problems with followers as a group, listens to ideas and then decides alone. • GII: Leader shares problems with followers as a group and then seeks and accepts consensus agreement.

8. Vroom and Yetton’s Leadership Decision Tree

9. Concluding Thoughts about the Normative Decision 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 situation.

10. Factors from the Normative Decision Model and the Interactional Framework

11. 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.

12. Situational Leadership

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. Factors from the Situational Leadership® Model and the Interactional Framework

17. 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.

18. Least-Preferred Coworker Scale – Motivational Hierarchies for Low- and High-LPC Leaders

19. 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

20. Contingency Model Octant Structure for Determining Situational Favorability

21. Prescriptions of the Model

22. Factors from Fiedler’s Contingency Theory and the Interactional Framework

23. 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.

24. 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

25. The Four Leader Behaviors ofPath-Goal Theory

26. Interaction between Followers’ Locus of Control Scores and Leader Behavior in Decision Making

27. Examples of Applying Path-Goal Theory

28. Factors from Path-Goal Theory and the Interactional Framework

29. 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.