This chapter is designed to provide an overview of four of the more well-known contingency
theories of leadership, which include the normative decision model (Vroom & Vetton, 1973), the
situational leadership model (Hersey & Blanchard, 1984), the contingency model (Fiedler,
1967), and the path-goal theory (House & Dessler, 1974). All four models are fairly similar in
that they specify that leaders should make their behaviors contingent on certain aspects of the
followers or the situation in order to improve leadership effectiveness. In addition, all four
theories implicitly assume that leaders can accurately assess key follower and situational factors.
However, as the material regarding perception in Chapter 3 shows, it is entirely possible that two
leaders in the same situation may reach very different conclusions about followers' level of
knowledge, maturity, the strength of leader-follower relationships, the degree of task structure, or
the level of role ambiguity being experienced by followers. These differences in perception could
lead these two leaders to reach different conclusions bout the situation, which may in turn cause
them to take very different actions in response to the situation. Furthermore, these actions may
be in accordance or in conflict with the prescriptions of any of these four theories. Also, the fact
that leaders' perceptions may have caused them to act in a manner not prescribed by a particular
model may be an underlying reason why these four theories have reported conflicting findings,
particularly in field settings. Another reason these theories have generally found mixed support in field settings
concerns the fact that they are all fairly limited in scope. Many of the factors that affect leader
and follower behaviors in work group, team, or volunteer committee settings are not present in
laboratory studies but often play a substantial role in field studies. For example, none of the
models take into account how levels of stress, organizational culture and climate, working
conditions, technology, economic conditions, or type of organizational design affect the
leadership process. Nevertheless, the four contingency theories have been the subject of
considerable research, and even if only mixed support for the models has been found, this
research has succeeded in adding to our body of knowledge about leadership and has given us a
more sophisticated understanding of the leadership process. |