Situational, or Contingency, Approaches

• Art disillusionment with the "great man" and trait approaches to understanding leadership increased, attention turned to the study of situations and the belief that leaders are the product of given situations, large number of situations, large number of studies have been made on the premise that leadership strongly affected by the situation from which the leader emerges and in which he or she operates. That this is a persuasive approach is indicated by the emergence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depressior of the 1930s in the United States and the rise of Mao Zedong in China in the period of World War II. This approach to leadership recognizes that there exists an interaction between the group and the leader. It supports the follower theory that people tend to follow those whom they perceive (accurately or inaccurately) as offering them a means of accomplishing their personal desires. The leader, then, is the person who recognizes these desires and does things, or undertakes programs, designed to meet them.
• Situational, or contingency, approaches obviously have much meaning for managerial theory and practice. They also tie into the system of motivation discussed, and they are important for practicing managers, who must consider the situation when they design at environment for performance.
● FIEDLER'S CONTINGENCY APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP
• Although their approach to leadership is primarily one of analyzing leadership style. Fred E. Fiedler and his approaches at the University of Illinois came up with a CONTINGENCY THEORY OF LEADERSHIP. The theory holds that people become leaders not only because of the attributes of their personalilities but also because of various situational factors and the interactions between leaders and group members.
• Critical dimensions of the leadership situation
On the basis of his studies, Fiedler describe dimensions of the leadership of situation that help determine what style of leadership be most effective.
• Position Power: This is the degree to which the power of a position, as distinguished from other sources of power, such as personality or expertise, enables a leader to get group members to comply with directions. In the case of managers, this is the power arising from organizational authority. As Fiedler points out, a leader with clear and considerable position power can obtain good followership more easily than one without such power.
• Task structure: With this dimension, Fiedler has in mind the extent to which tasks can be clearly spelled out and people held responsible for them. If tasks are (rather than vague and unstructured), the quality of performance can be more easily controlled and group members can be more easily controlled and group members can be held more definitely responsible for performance.
• Leader-member relations: Fiedler regards this dimension as the most important from a leader's point of view, since position and task structure may be largely under the control of an enterprise. It has to do with the extent to which group members like and trust a leader and are willing to follow that leader.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Fundamentals of Management : Leadership [BBA 2305]
--------------------------------------------------------------
Ovi Mail: Simple and user-friendly interface
http://mail.ovi.com