Contingency theories of leadership were intended to resolve the problems of Trait and Behavioural theories. To what extent have they achieved? According to the dictionary, leadership is « the process whereby one person influences the thoughts and behaviour of others »; it thus appears to be a key element in the success of a company. In those circumstances, we must wonder what the parameters that make a leadership efficient are. It is accordingly that Dr Ralph Melvin Stogdill, an American professor of Psychology, developed the « Trait theory » based on Thomas Carlysle's « Great Man » concept. It was later completed by inter alia Mutton and Blake, who added the dimension of behaviour. However innovative they were, those theories which aimed to describe the ideal leader were inexact; indeed some leaderships which reunited right criteria happened to be fails. In that context, Joseph Bower in order to solve those problems elaborated the « Contingency theory », which particularity was to take into account the employees and the situation of the leadership.
[...] Fiedler contingency model is known as the most important contingency theory; it is based on the following assumption: the efficiency of a leader depends on the correspondence between its style of leadership and the situation The style depends on the task and the people; Fiedler evaluates it thanks to the LPC (Least Preferred Co Worker). The situation on the other hand depends on three things: the relationship between the leader and the others, the structure of the task, and at last sources of the power. [...]
[...] However, contingency theories do not resolve all the problems, indeed, even if they give us some clues, like tools such as the PLC and the Vroom and Yetton's diagnostic, or the consequences of the different styles of leadership to decide which style of leadership we should choose, they do not provide us a best one. Moreover, Management being a human science, contingency theories do not remove the uncertainties due to the fact that it is not based on Mathematical equations, but only on observations. [...]
[...] Carlyle (1795-1781) was the initiator of these theories with his great men concept. Indeed through his observations of historical leaders (Napoleon, Cromwell ) he established a list of common traits; this list was later propped up by Dr Ralph Melvin Stogdill who counted around 163 different traits. Nowadays, determining leader's traits still interest psychologists as well as well economists. Some of the main traits according to Stogdill: Traits Skills Adaptable to situations Clever Alert to social environment Conceptually skilled Ambitious and achievement Creative oriented Assertive Diplomatic Cooperative Fluent in speaking Decisive Knowledgeable about group task Dependable Persuasive Dominant Socially skilled Energetic Well organised Persistent Self confident Tolerant and stress Willing to assume responsibility Source: Stogdill Those theories partly permitted to explain the success of a few men; it has as well shown that there were not only one but many different models of leadership. [...]
[...] As we have seen, behavioural theories are a good complement to trait theories; they indeed remove the idea that leadership is innate and add that it is affected by leader's conduct. However, even by using behavioural theories, it remains hard to build a good leadership, because of the problems linked to the research of a good equilibrium, between people and production: caring too much about people may affect productivity; on the other hand caring to much about production may affect people. [...]
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