Fiedler’s Contingency Model in Organization Leadership
Introduction
In organization leadership, various theories have been developed. One of the oldest theories on leadership was developed by Fred Fiedler; he is the founder of the comprehensive contingency model in leadership. Primarily, his model was based on effective leadership, predicting and measuring the interaction between leaders’ personality and their situational control; the aim was to foresee the overall leadership performance. Critically emphasizing the latter performance, he stated that “the quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an organization.” More importantly, he highlighted that the success of a leader is subject to the individual’s basic leadership style. This could be evaluated using the least preferred co-worker (LPC) questionnaire, which was critical in determining whether a leader was task-oriented or relationship-oriented (Crockett, 2019). This white paper seeks to expound on Fielder’s contingency model, examining the model's changes and offering additional evidence about the efficacy of the model in organizational behavior.
The Contingency Model
Various scholars appreciate shifts in leadership and thus the need to develop contingency theories. These theories are meant to explain the effectiveness of leadership performance. We must therefore appreciate the contribution of Fred Fiedler in the development of the first comprehensive contingency model. In this model, Fiedler stated that group performance effectiveness depends on a proper match between the leader’s style and situation control. Fielder’s model was primarily put forward in 1964 to solve questions emerging with concern on leadership study (Suharyanto & Lestari, 2020, December). These questions were concerning leadership and group effectiveness, social, organizational psychology as well as leadership ineffective management. During this time, there was much questioning concerning personality characters and traits that make some leaders effective. The theory had two major components; one was situational favorableness and leadership style. According to Fiedler, the performance of a group is contingent upon the motivational system of the leader and the leader’s control of influence (Crockett, 2019). The leadership situation is what he defines as the arena, from where the leader seeks to satisfy their own and organization goals. In this context, a group is defined as sharing proximity, similarities, and common fates on related events. In this mode, the concern was on group members, who, despite being independent they share the common goals.
A leader of the group is an individual whose is role is to direct and coordinate tasks that concern a specific group’s activities. These groups, whether appointed or elected, influence the question of tasks, with effectiveness in their leadership determined by their group performance on the assigned tasks. An excellent example presented by Fiedler is concerning the psychotherapeutic relations where the productive psychotherapists regarded them as equals to their patients (Suharyanto & Lestari, 2020, December). On the other hand, the poor therapist deemed themselves as completely unlike their patients. His postulations were that therapists who feel similar to others are psychologically close to, accepting, and permissive towards other people and thus able to discover attitudes related to team performance. This brings two categories of leaders, one being relationship-oriented and task-oriented.
In the running of the groups, relationship-oriented leaders were more effective than those who were task-oriented. Indeed, the relationship-oriented would be psychologically closer to their teams than those in task-oriented teams. The task-oriented groups are characterized by psychologically distant and less accepting leaders and commonly no support from individual members. Fiedler’s proposition was to develop an integrated framework that highlights the factors determining the leader’s personality that affect performance. This came with the appreciation that the group environment will make it relatively easy or challenging for the leader to influence the group members. The contingency model "hypothesized that the leader's perceptions of his co-workers reflect important, task-relevant attitudes and that these would materially influence group interaction and performance (Crockett, 2019).”
Fiedler highlighted the importance of the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) component in the contingency theory in the measure of organizational leadership success. Besides, he offered various interpretations of occasions at the same time that the leaders face in the workplace as leaders. However, to avoid confusion, he mentioned that LPC is not a self-report measure of personal behavior or values; instead, a group of respondents answers a questionnaire concerning the basic leadership style. The score contained the component of assumed similarities between opposites (ASo) score, which correlated with LPC and thus usable interchangeably (Sharma, 2019). The score was obtained when a leader described the most preferred co-worker (MPC) and the least preferred co-worker (LPC). These descriptions were achieved using an eight-point, bi-polar checklist, which description of personality attributes. “…such as pleasant vs. unpleasant, friendly vs. unfriendly and rejecting vs. accepting (Crockett, 2019).” While measuring an individual’s profile similarity, an individual, either most or a least preferred co-worker, will have a high assumed similarity score; those with strong differences between the two opposites on the co-workers will have a low score.
Generally, effective leadership is predicted by the ASo or LPC score. This score points out the degree of good interpersonal relations in the groups, and the direction of the relationships was contingent on these relations and the nature of the tasks. More so, leaders who were permissive, accepting, high LPC performed better in the groups, especially on creative tasks under relatively free-stress conditions. On the contrary, d "the managing, controlling, low LPC leaders had better performance under relatively less pleasant, more tension-arousing group climates.” Additionally, Fiedler comes to the admission that the model is a prediction of curvilinear relationship and that leaders with low LPC scores “… would perform more effectively in very favorable and unfavorable situations, while high LPC leaders . . . would perform more effectively in situations intermediate in favorableness (Crockett, 2019)." Ultimately, we need to either make the situations meet the leader’s capacity or improve the leader to meet the situation.
The Change in Contingency Model Overtime
However, the theory was highly applicable in measuring and determining factors that would limit performance in the organization; there were shortcomings associated with the theory. One of the challenges associated with the theory is its rigid characteristic in analyses to achieve quantifiable results, which would in most of the time, be irrational and un-contingent. Additionally, Fiedler, in one way, which is the theory, and acts in another (model), although we would not call him a hypocrite, the contingency theory becomes difficult or impossible (Covelli & Mason, 2017). Also, the explanation regarding ASo scores, especially with low LPC leader, o tsk accomplishment concerning task accomplishment with the co-workers feeling, borrowed from the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, makes the model doubtful. Overly, the model has a focus on the leader’s perspective leaving out the member’s contribution. We all understand that performance cannot be achieved with isolated leaders, which makes the theory weaker. These drawbacks make the theory not applicable in the present-day organization, thus, a need for a change.
These changes are intertwined with the waves of theory and research. Aftermath World War II, research took another pace on behavioral and attitude, behavioral, social-cognitive, and contingency, as well as transformational, social change, and gender-related research. The contingency theory has followed by expanding the focus on leadership, where the leadership findings were revisited. This was done through meta-analysis on studies and literature to examine the leadership outcomes (Lord et al., 2017). These changes also included transformational and charismatic leadership to examine the antecedents and mechanisms used in leadership and their effects on followers’ perceptions and attitudes towards leaders. More precisely, the transformational model had a focus on development, which was purposely to outdo the criticism on conceptualization and measurement of the leadership styles as well as offering clear dimensions on leadership, thus shaping the performance outcomes.
In the recent research on leadership, the researchers have developed the leader-member exchange theory. This theory is relation-ship based, whose focus is on the relationship between the leaders and their followers. In this model, individuals members of the workgroup are treated differently to transform strange members into acquaintances, creating mutual trust. In this, some relationships are created; some of the sections in this leadership include gender and leadership, especially concerning the top positions (Lord et al., 2017). This ensures the elimination of gender bias, which might result in gender inequality and sometimes discrimination. Moreover, another concern is team leadership, which encourages synergy among team members to foster team development. Some common forms of team leadership include functional leadership, transformational leadership in the teams, which ensure the creation of an enabling structure and resources to influence the overall outcomes.
Evidence on the Efficacy of Contingency Model in Organizational Behavior
Since the development of the contingency theory of leadership, it has been in a position to remain valid even with the current organization. This has been possible as it has made teams or organizations achieve the best performance, which is the designated leadership outcome. According to Murschetz (2017), contingency theory provides a major framework that forms the basis for organizational structural design. The efficacy of the model is based on the opportunities it offers to organizations. Some of these include hetero-performance, especially on the organizations that fit, with the structural contingency theory as opposed to those that do not fit. This fit in an organization will result in a high level of performance, which is the expected outcome in most organizations. Additionally, Murschetz highlights how organizational change, when overcome, an organization will enjoy a higher performance, which will thus result in expansion.
Also, organizations need to shift from the traditional development strategies. Instead, these organizations have adopted new developments in information technology, and these also involve the creation of new structures. Some of these strategies include the elimination of hierarchies and embrace the relationship-oriented leadership strategy (Rüzgar, 2018). The importance of technology is to foster the spread of data and calculations. In this context, the organization needs to appreciate the work that the organization can produce real outcomes due to operational effectiveness, which translates to high performance—improved performance in the goal of all the organizations, which defines its success.
References
Covelli, B. J., & Mason, I. (2017). Linking theory to practice: Authentic leadership. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 16(3), 1-10.
Crockett, M. R. (2019). Effective Leadership Styles in Long-Term Residential Stroke Facilities: A Phenomenological Study (Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University).
Lord, R. G., Day, D. V., Zaccaro, S. J., Avolio, B. J., & Eagly, A. H. (2017). Leadership in applied psychology: Three waves of theory and research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 434.
Murschetz, P. C. (2017). Connected TV: Conceptualizing the Fit Between Convergence and Organizational Strategy Within a Contingency Theory Framework: The Case of Germany. In Media Convergence and Deconvergence (pp. 261-283). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Rüzgar, N. (2018). The effect of leaders’ adoption of task-oriented or relationship-oriented leadership style on leader-member exchange (LMX), in the organizations that are active in service sector: A research on tourism agencies. Journal of Business Administration Research, 7(1), 50-60.
Sharma, U. (2019). Giving contingency theory of management accounting and control a critical edge. International Journal of Critical Accounting, 11(1), 16-25.
Suharyanto, A., & Lestari, R. D. (2020, December). The Fall and Rise of The Contingency Theory of Leadership. In Iapa Proceedings Conference (pp. 479-496).
