1. Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

2. Contingency Theories of Leadership13
Contingency Theories of Leadership
Chapter
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

3. Introduction
Leadership is contingent upon the interplay of all three aspects of the leader-follower-situation (L-F-S) model.
Four other theories share similarities:
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. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
LMX argues that leaders do not treat all followers like a uniform group of equals.
The leader forms specific and unique linkages with each subordinate, creating a series of dyadic relationships.
With the out-group, or low-quality exchange relationships, interpersonal interaction is limited to fulfilling contractual obligations.
With the in-group, leaders form high-quality exchange relationships that go beyond what the job requires and benefit both parties.

5. The Cycle of Leadership Making
Table 13.1: The Cycle of Leadership Making: Source: Adapted from G. B.
Graen and M. Uhl-Bien, “Relationship-Based Approach to Leadership:
Development of Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) Theory over 25 Years: Applying a Multi-Level Multi-Domain Perspective,” Leadership Quarterly 6 (1995), pp. 219–47.

6. The Normative Decision Model
The level of input subordinates have in decision-making varies substantially depending on the issue, the followers’ technical expertise, or the presence/absence of a crisis.
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.

7. 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 (AI) to completely democratic (GII) was discovered.

8. 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.
As with quality, acceptance of a decision is not always critical for implementation.

9. The Decision Tree
Vroom and Yetton developed a normative decision model and a set of questions to protect quality and acceptance by eliminating decision processes that would be wrong/inappropriate.
Most questions concern the problem itself, the amount of pertinent information possessed by the leader and followers, and situational factors.
The questions were incorporated into a decision tree.

10. Vroom and Yetton’s Leadership Decision Tree
FIGURE 13.1 Vroom and Yetton’s Leadership Decision Tree
Source: Reprinted from V. H. Vroom and P. W. Yetton, Leadership and Decision Making, by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press, © 1973 University of Pittsburgh Press.

11. Concluding Thoughts about the Normative Decision Model
Some questions could/should be placed elsewhere, and no questions address a leader’s personality, values, motivations, or attitudes.
The L-F-S framework organizes concepts in a familiar conceptual structure.
No proof that leaders using the model are more effective overall than leaders not using it.
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.

12. Factors from the Normative Decision Model and the Interactional Framework
FIGURE 13.2 Factors from the Normative Decision Model and the Interactional Framework

13. The Situational Leadership Model
The Situational Leadership model focuses on two leadership behavior categories.
Task behaviors are the extent to which the leader spells out the responsibilities of an individual or group.
Telling people what to do, how/when to do it, and who is to do it
Relationship behaviors are how much the leader engages in two-way communication.
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.

14. Situational Leadership
FIGURE 13.3
Situational
Leadership ®
Source: P. Hersey, K.
Blanchard, and D. Johnson,
Management of Organizational
Behavior: Utilizing Human
Resources, 7th ed.
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1996), p. 200.
Copyright © Reprinted
with permission of the
Center for Leadership
Studies, Inc., Escondido, CA
All rights reserved

15. The Situational Leadership Model (continued)
Follower readiness refers to 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.

16. The Situational Leadership Model (continued)
While combining follower readiness levels with the four combinations of leader behaviors, four segments emerge along a continuum.
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 by implementing a series of developmental interventions to help boost follower readiness levels.
The intervention is designed to help followers in their development.

17. 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 usually appeals to students and practitioners because of its commonsense approach and 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, not on acting the same way toward them all.

18. Factors from the Situational Leadership® Model and the Interactional Framework
FIGURE 13.4
Factors from the Situational Leadership ® Model and the Interactional Framework

19. The Contingency Model
Although leaders may be able to change their behaviors toward individual subordinates, they 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.
Some leaders are better than others in some situations but less effective in other situations.

20. The Least Preferred Co-worker Scale
Fiedler’s least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale has a leader consider the single individual that has been the most difficult to work with and then describe that person in terms of bipolar adjectives (friendly-unfriendly, boring-interesting, sincere-insincere).
Those ratings are then converted into a numerical score.
The score represents something about the leader, not the specific individual the leader evaluated.

21. Motivational Hierarchies for Low- and High-LPC Leaders
FIGURE 13.5
Motivational
Hierarchies for
Low- and High-LPC
Leaders

22. 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:
Leader-member relations
Task structure
Position power
The relative weights of the 3 components, taken together, can be used to create a continuum of situational favorability.

23. Contingency Model Octant Structure for Determining Situational Favorability
FIGURE Contingency Model Octant Structure for Determining Situational Favorability

24. Prescriptions of the Model
Leaders will try to satisfy a primary motivation when faced with unfavorable or moderately favorable situations and will behave according to their secondary motivational state only when faced with highly favorable situations.
Leadership training should stress situational engineering rather than behavioral flexibility.
Organizations could be more effective by matching a leader’s characteristics with situational demands instead of trying to change a leader’s behavior to fit the situation.

25. Prescriptions of the Model
FIGURE 13.7 Leader Effectiveness Based on the Contingency between Leader
LPC Score and Situation Favorability

26. Factors from Fiedler’s Contingency Theory and the Interactional Framework
FIGURE 13.8 Factors from Fiedler’s Contingency Theory and the Interactional Framework

27. 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.
A leader’s actions should strengthen followers’ beliefs that if they exert a certain level of effort, they will be more likely to accomplish a task, and if they accomplish the task, they will be more likely to achieve some valued outcome.

28. The Path-Goal Theory (continued)
Leaders may use varying styles with different subordinates and differing styles with the same subordinates in different situations.
Followers will actively support a leader if they view the leader’s actions as a way to increase their own levels of satisfaction.
Followers’ perceptions of their own skills can affect the impact of certain leader behaviors.
Situational factors impact the effects of leader behavior on follower attitudes and behaviors:
Task
Formal authority system
Primary work group

29. The Four Leader Behaviors of Path-Goal Theory
TABLE 13.2 The Four Leader Behaviors of Path–Goal Theory

30. Interaction between Followers’ Locus of Control Scores and Leader Behavior in Decision Making
FIGURE 13.9 Interaction between Followers’ Locus of Control Scores and Leader Behavior in
Decision Making. Source: Adapted from T. R. Mitchell, C. M. Smyser, and S. E. Weed, “Locus of
Control: Supervision and Work Satisfaction,” Academy of Management Journal 18 (1975), pp. 623–30.

31. Examples of Applying Path-Goal Theory
FIGURE 13.10
Examples of Applying Path–Goal Theory

32. Factors from Path-Goal Theory and the Interactional Framework
FIGURE 13.11
Factors from Path–Goal Theory and the Interactional Framework

33. Summary The five contingency theories of leadership:
Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
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.
All theories have mixed support in field settings because they are all limited in scope.