11/22/2017 Fiedler's contingency theory

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Articles Name(s): Fiedler's contingency theory Your e-mail address is t
Leadership News Author: Fred Fiedler secure.
Classification: Contingency Theories See our Privacy Polic
Year: 1958 in his work Leader Attitudes and Group
Management Effectiveness

Management Pro's
Articles
The theory is extremely well researched, given the
Time stated parameters.
Management For a "thumb-in-the-wind" approach to identifying
Articles leaders, Fiedler's contingency theory can assist
enormously:
Leaders with good personal relations are matched
Communication to a poorly structured task environment.
For leaders who are impersonal, they are placed in
Communication well task structured environment.
Articles Because this is a contingency theory, it is inherently
more flexible than a "one takes all" theory.

Motivation Con's

LPC scale is subjective, and characteristics are

Motivation
relative in contexts.
Theories Even according to Fiedler, the LPC score is valid only
Motivation for groups that are closely supervised and does not
Articles apply to "open ones" such as teams.
It is questionable whether Fiedler's contingency
theory is valid in all situations, such as when neither
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11/22/2017 Fiedler's contingency theory

Types of the task is well defined and no choice of leaders is to

Motivation be had, except ones with bad personalities.

Employee
Motivation Overview
Fiedler's contingency theory is one of the contingency
Quotes theories that states that effective leadership depends not
only on the style of leading but on the control over a
situation. There needs to be good leader-member
Self Motivation
relations, task with clear goals and procedures, and the
Quotes
ability for the leader to mete out rewards and
Inspirational punishments. Lacking these three in the right combination
Quotes and context will result in leadership failure. Fiedler created
Famous the least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale, where a leader
Leadership is asked what traits can be ascribed to the co-worker that
the leader likes the least. As an example [1]:
Quotes
Uncooperative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Cooperative
Unfriendly 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Friendly
Other
Hostile 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Supportive
What's New - Guarded 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Open
Blog ........ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ........
How to Cite
Articles Discussion
Link Page
Fiedler's contingency theory is a qualification or type of
Q & A Section
contingency theory. Contingency theories in general state
Post Your Article that the effectiveness of leadership depends upon the
Feedback Survey situation, and there are numerous factors, such as the
nature of the task, leader's personality, and make-up of
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the group being led. For a more comprehensive discussion
of contingency theories in general, see Contingency
Theories.
Follow Us
Need Help? To provide meaning to Fiedler's contingency theory it is
necessary to focus on at least one aspect of the leader-led
situation, although such a focus only highlights an issue,
rather than giving a complete description of the situation.

Fiedler's contingency theory emphasized the leader's

personality, or psychological disposition, is a main variable
in her/his ability to lead, and said that how the group
receives the leader, the task involved, and whether the
leader can actually exert control over the group are the
three principle factors that determine how successful the
leader-led arrangement will be. Thus, the values from the
least preferred co-worker (LPC) are added and then
averaged to produce the score. A high LPC score, as can
be seen from the example, exhibits a positive orientation
towards human relations. S/he gets along with people.

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11/22/2017 Fiedler's contingency theory

The nature of the task is

less important and issues
in doing it may be
compensated for with
good human relations.
When the environment is
such that each group
member is independent,
such as in a scientific
setting, tasks may not be
all that well defined, and
a leader must rely more
on her or his personality
to accomplish goals.

On the contrary side, the

low LPC score, the
respondent relies on the
nature of the task to
drive leadership. The
task has to be well
defined or manageable,
or the leader will be in
trouble. In natural
disasters or survival
situations, tasks are not
always well defined or
prioritized well. Human
relations are vital. A
classic scenario is
depicted in William
Golding's Lord of the
Flies, where kids are
stranded on a deserted
tropical island and ultimately fall into fighting with each
other. While they are youth, they exhibit many basic
human qualities that emerge under duress. Situations,
where tasks are structured such as in most blue collar
environments or the military, a personable leader isn’t as
much of a required. Orders come to "do it, or else", and
while cultivating a following based on personality never
hurts, it is not a requisite, except when authority becomes
overbearing, such as in tyrannical situations.

Leaders who have a low LPC scoring (task-oriented) are

effective, regardless of whether the factors are highly
favorable or not. Also, they will act in a more assertive
manner. With high LPC scores (relations-oriented) are
more effective when the three factors are middle-of-the-
road. Fiedler claimed that the LPC scores could be used to
identify the appropriate leader for a situation. If a leader is
able to control the tasks to be done, leader-led situations,
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11/22/2017 Fiedler's contingency theory

and have power, the leader can create a favorable

leadership environment.

Critique
The vagueness of the parameters in the LPC scale makes
them open to interpretation and they are context-free. For
example, "supportive" could mean anything. Giving
criticism can be supportive, but in whose eyes? A leader
who is egotistical may not see any criticism as supportive.
As with any surveys, one must ask how dynamic are they?
Personalities and judgments of them change over time and
with circumstances. Survey research is notoriously
inaccurate, as Gabriel Almond found four decades ago [2],
and modern survey techniques are very sophisticated,
albeit fraught with problems. The proof of a theory is its
ability to predict, but if the terms are vague enough, just
about any prediction will do. As somewhat of a sidebar,
controversies about "prophets" such as Nostradamus
abound, but the fact is that his predictions were so general
that many could be deemed accurate. Horoscopes are
beset with the same difficulties, as the traits are so
general that just about anyone would qualify as having
those about any day and in the right circumstances -
which also are usually described in vague terms.

Future of theory
The LPC model appears very much like a Bayesian
weighting scheme that might be integrated into a social
networking model to test organizational integrity.
However, the parameters would need to be quantified, and
a research instrument tested. The ways in which such
models can emerge is suggested by the diagrams of those
giving their renditions of Fiedler's contingency theory and
applications.

As with any theory, research awaits concerning how this

theory might be compared or integrated with others, such
as the Leader-Member Exchange, where a leader
maintains leadership through working with her or his
supporters. This involves more of an analysis of the
particulars of group dynamics. There can be a refinement
of the LPC with the Leadership Participation Inventory
which identifies characteristics of a leader that followers
admire and would cause them to follow.

This discussion would not be complete without a reference

to a validation of the personality traits by cognitive
neuroscience. We said earlier that refinement of these
terms should be done, but their validation via brain scans,
while sounding quite futuristic, is not out of the question,
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