Contingency Theories

Contingency theories refer to effective leadership behavior that is dependent on the interaction of the leader's personal traits, the leader's behavior, and factors in the leadership situation. Contingency theories are associated with leadership, management, and practice. Contingency theories are also known as situational theories. Path-goal theory is a contingency theory. Leadership varies with the situation. Contingency theories are associated with the scholarship of Fred Fiedler, Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, and Victor Vroom and Phillip Yetton. More currently, the work of James Spillane has been associated with contingency theory.

Contingency theory is governed by context, organizational structure, environment, and the interaction of the leader's personal traits and situational aspects. It is based on context or situation line of scholarship focusing on relations between the situation of leaders' work and their actions, goals, and behaviors. Contingency theory contends that there is no one best way to organize. Organizational structure matters when it comes to performance and the influences of group and team dynamics, political issues, culture, ethic, spirit, and change. The most effective method to organize depends on the organization's environment, including group and team dynamics, political issues, culture, ethic, spirit, and change. Contingency theories are grounded on the relations between leaders and followers and the extent to which the leadership task is structured. Effective leadership depends on the interaction of the leader's personal traits, the leaders' behavior, and factors in the leadership situation. Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal assert that most contingency [Page 207]theories fail to distinguish between leadership and management; however, they acknowledge that widely varying circumstances require different forms of leadership.

Fred Fiedler has asserted that the effectiveness of a leader in achieving high group performance is contingent on the leader's motivational system and ability to influence the situation. He identifies three situational favorableness factors: leader/member relations, task structure, and the leader's power position.

Hersey and Blanchard used a situational leadership model that identified task behaviors and relationship behavior. Task behavior is defined as one-way communication to explain what, how, when, and where tasks are to be performed or spell out duties and responsibilities of individuals and groups. Relationship behavior is defined as two-way communication to provide socioemotional support, psychological strokes, and facilitating behaviors. Two-way communication includes listening, encouraging, facilitating, providing clarification, and giving sociocultural support. Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership model combines task and people into a two-by-two process, which demonstrates four possible leadership styles, including telling, selling, participating, and delegating.

Bolman and Deal argue that Hersey and Blanchard's model focuses primarily on the relationship between managers and subordinates and fails to meaningfully incorporate structure (organizational structure), politics, or symbols (culture). While contingency theory is criticized, it has made a major contribution to leadership research by focusing on context or the situation—the people, the task, and the organization. Leadership style may be more realistically realized as effective in one set of circumstances and ineffective in another. Leadership style should match the situation.