A CONTINGENCY THEORY OF LEADERSHIP
Jay Lorsch
Harvard University
Introduction
The idea of a contingency theory of leadership is not novel. In the 1960’s several scholars conducted research and proposed such an approach arguing that the style of leadership which would be most effective depended upon the situation (Fiedler1, Tannenbaum and Schmidt2, and Vroom and Yetton3). This work was an integral part of the wave of organizational behavior research which led to what we labeled a “Contingency Theory” of o rganizations at the time. 4 Like much of the early contingency work, these efforts on leadership suffered from some limitations. First while there was an agreement that the appropriate leadership style did depend on situational contingencies there was not complete agreement about what such factors were. For example all three of the authors cited indicated that the appropriate leadership style did depend upon the nature of the task, specifically how certain or uncertain it was. However Vroom and Yetton defined the task as decision making, while the others were not so specific about the type of task.
1 Fiedler, Frederick E, A Contingency Model for the Prediction of Leadership Effectiveness (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1963).
2 Tannenbaum, Robert and Warren H. Schmidt, “How to Choose a Leadership Pattern,” Harvard Business Review (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing) March-April 1958: 95-101.
3 Vroom, Victor H. and Philip W. Yetton, Leadership and Decision-making (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973).
4 Lawrence, Paul R. and Jay W. Lorsch, Organization and Environment (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1967).
Moreover each of the authors introduced other contingent factors. For example Fiedler introduced the relationship between the leader and his subordinates and the power of the leader. Tannenbaum and Schmidt were concerned about the group of follower’s size, history and values, as well as the time pressures facing them. Vroom and Yetton were concerned with the group’s decision making style- autocratic, consultative, or group based.  In spite of such variations all agreed that the appropriate dimension of leadership style to consider was directive to participative, although Fiedler also introduced the matter of the leader being task oriented or relationship oriented. Another limitation to thi
s work was that it all seemed to be focused on leadership in primary groups and said nothing about leadership in larger organizations.
A final limitation of these studies was that the authors disagreed about how best to achieve the fit they desired between these situations and the leader’s behavior. Tannenbaum and Schmidt took the position that leaders could choose their leadership style, as did Vroom and Yetton. In essence both believed a leader could change her style to fit the situation. On the other hand Fiedler argued that it was easier to change the situational conditions than it was for the leader to change her behavior. In essence, he argued that his ideas could be used to select leaders whose style fit the situation at hand.
In my judgment, in spite of such limits, from the perspective of forty years later these studies were pointing scholars interested in leadership in the right direction. Unfortunately, scholarship about leadership followed a different path. An example of what happened can be found in Kotter’s work.  In his early work he took a contingency approach.5  In his later work he focused on general principles that he argues are relevant to all leaders, but not managers.6 This distinction between managers and leaders was first made by Zaleznik, and I shall return to what I believe is this false dichotomy shortly7. But the point to be made here is that Kotter was not alone in this search for general principles. Many of the most well known scholars of leadership and organization preceded or joined him. In addition to Zal
eznik, there were Bennis8, Likert9 and McGregor10, to name three others. In essence the argument that dominated all these scholars work was that all leaders to be effective needed to do the same things. To be clear they weren’t always pointing to the same precise behaviors, but all leaders to be successful needed their prescriptions, whatever they were. For example McGregor proposed his famous Theory Y, which in essence was quite similar to Likert’s i deas about participative leadership. Kotter, for his part, was focused on leadership as a matter of introducing change, so he prescribed as effective
5 Kotter, John P. The General Managers (New York, NY: The Free Press), 1982 and “Renn Zaphiropoulos,” (480044) and “Fred Henderson” (480043), Harvard Business School Publishing, 1980.
6 Kotter, John P, Leading Change (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996).
7 Zaleznik, Abraham, Human Dilemmas of Leadership (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1966).
8 Bennis, Warren G, Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1985).
9 Likert, Rensis, The Human Organization: Its Management and Value (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1967).
10 McGregor, Douglas, The Human Side of Enterprise (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1985).
leadership, communicating the need for change, and building a coalition of those who would support moving in a new direction.
While these authors seemed to be discussing leadership in the context of organizations that were larger than primary groups, they were not explicit about the settings to which their ideas applied. In essence they seemed to assume that one type of leadership fit all situations. Even just a few moments of reflection must lead to a recognition that this cannot be! An Army Lieutenant leading a platoon of soldiers in Iraq has a different leadership challenge than a district sales manager for a consumer products company in Missouri, who is responsible for 100 sales representatives. The CEO of the same company, which has fifty thousand employees world wide, has yet a different set of leadership issues. Similarly the senior partner of a prestigious law firm, owned by his partners, has a different set of circumstances, and so does the newly elected Governor of one of the fifty states! Clearly if we are to develop systematic knowledge about effective leadership we have to recognize the differences which are suggested by these examples, and many others!
editors decisionLeadership Defined
Before we can begin to consider a way to conceptualize the conditions facing leaders in such diverse circumstances, we have to resolve a more basic question.
What do we mean by “leadership”?  As I suggested above there is a problem in the leadership literature in this regard. In fact I discern two issues.
One is that many writers about leadership have assumed that it is such a well understood concept, that no explicit definition is necessary. This was a risky approach to begin with, because as so often happens in the social sciences different scholars use the same term to describe different phenomenon. In the hard sciences, in contrast there is clear agreement about what an atom, cell, or molecule is. However those of us who study organizations do not have such clarity. We may assume that we all share the same definitions but we likely do not. This lack of a clear definition has been complicated by the aforementioned distinction drawn first by Zaleznik and then by Kotter and others. According to this view leaders are individuals who are introducing change. Managers are sustaining the status quo by motivating organization members to work effectively. Further the inference is made that it is impossible, or at least difficult for the same person to be an effective leader and an effective manager.
I know that one of the editors of this volume (Nohria) has used the same distinction and also that many
students in leadership classes and courses and others including many practicing executives have found this distinction useful.11
11 Mayo, Anthony J. and Nitin Nohria, In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2005).

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