6 Fiedler’s contingency theory

The contingency approaches to leadership describe the role the situation would have in choosing the most effective leadership style. Fiedler’s contingency theory argued that task-oriented leaders would be most effective when the situation was the most and the least favorable, whereas people-oriented leaders would be effective when situational favorableness was moderate. Situational Leadership Theory takes the maturity level of followers into account. House’s path-goal theory states that the leader’s job is to ensure that employees view their effort as leading to performance, and to increase the belief that performance would be rewarded. For this purpose, leaders would use directive-, supportive-, participative-, and achievement-oriented leadership styles depending on what employees needed to feel motivated. Vroom and Yetton’s normative model is a guide leaders can use to decide how participative they should be given decision environment characteristics.