Contingency Theories

Some tough-minded leaders seem to gain a lot of admirers when they take over struggling companies and lead them out of crises. However, predicting leadership success is more complex than finding a few hero examples. Also, the leadership style that works in very bad times doesn’t necessarily translate into long-term success. When researchers looked at situational influences, it appeared that under condition a, leadership style x would be appropriate, whereas style y was more suitable for condition b, and style z for condition c. But what were conditions a, b, and c? We next consider the Fiedler model, one approach to isolating ...

Get Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 14/e now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.