Write a brief summary of the important concepts you learned from chapter 12 & 13. (Chapter 12 & 13 summary attached and textbook attached)

13-1Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

13-2

Contingency Theories of Leadership

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one

has data.”

~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

C h

a p

te r

13

13-3

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.

13-4

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.

13-5

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.

13-6

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.

13-7

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.

13-8

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.

13-9

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.

13-10

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.

13-11

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.

13-12

Factors from the Normative Decision Model and the Interactional Framework

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

13-13

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.

13-14

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 © 2006. Reprinted

with permission of the

Center for Leadership

Studies, Inc., Escondido, CA

92025. All rights reserved

13-15

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.

13-16

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.

13-17

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.

13-18

Factors from the Situational Leadership® Model and the Interactional Framework

FIGURE 13.4

Factors from the Situational Leadership ® Model and the Interactional Framework

13-19

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.

13-20

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.

13-21

Motivational Hierarchies for Low- and High-LPC Leaders

FIGURE 13.5

Motivational

Hierarchies for

Low- and High-LPC

Leaders

13-22

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.

13-23

Contingency Model Octant Structure for Determining Situational Favorability

FIGURE 13.6 Contingency Model Octant Structure for Determining Situational Favorability

13-24

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.

13-25

Prescriptions of the Model

FIGURE 13.7 Leader Effectiveness Based on the Contingency between Leader

LPC Score and Situation Favorability

13-26

Factors from Fiedler’s Contingency Theory and the Interactional Framework

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

13-27

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.

13-28

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

13-29

The Four Leader Behaviors of Path-Goal Theory

TABLE 13.2 The Four Leader Behaviors of Path–Goal Theory

13-30

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.

13-31

Examples of Applying Path-Goal Theory

FIGURE 13.10

Examples of Applying Path–Goal Theory

13-32

Factors from Path-Goal Theory and the Interactional Framework

FIGURE 13.11

Factors from Path–Goal Theory and the Interactional Framework

13-33

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.