Critical Analysis of Contingency Theory

Leadership is the process of inspiring, persuading, and influencing the actions, behaviors, and attitudes of members of a group and directing their activities to encourage them to work willingly and enthusiastically towards the achievement of the firm’s goals (Peretomode, 2012). Leadership entails the interaction of three dynamic elements; namely, a situation, a leader, and followers. In modern day, effective leaders have become a strategic factor because of their ability to catapult organizations to success as they are concerned with doing what is right rather than doing things right (Bass, 1985). The significant impact that leaders have on an organization has attracted researchers who have attempted to elucidate leadership in terms of theories among them contingency, trait, behavioral, and new leadership theories (Hay and Hodgkinson, 2006).

Contingency theories of leadership are classified into the path-goal theory, situational leadership theory, and Fiedler’s contingency theory. The path-goal theory posits that effective leadership styles are participative, supportive, directive, and achievement-oriented (Seyranian, 2009). Supportive leaders are relations oriented while directive leaders are task oriented while situations have either task characteristics or follower characteristics aspects. It further argues that the situation, ambiguity of the task, and characteristics of the group are critical in determining the best leadership style to use (Daft, 2005). This theory may not be suitable when selecting a leadership style as it has not been tested properly and is complex to interpret and apply. Path-goal related research presents several deficiencies including that of improper measurement (Hoye et al., 2012). Most researchers measure leader behaviors using different versions of the leader behavior description questionnaire (LBDQ), yet the scale of this instrument does not adequately capture the proposed constructs of the theory posing a challenge to measurements and more tests should be done to validate it (Northouse, 2010). Available path-goal theory research also tends to be simplistic, which supports the argument that the theory is complex to interpret and apply owing to the daunting task of incorporating all the dimensions simultaneously when choosing a leadership style (Hoye et al., 2012).

The Fiedler Contingency Theory focuses on the correlation between leadership and organizational performance. It depicts the association between leadership style and group outcome under different situational conditions. The theory employs the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) scale to determine a leader's task and relations motivation (Daft, 2005). They also use their good rapport with the group to increase performance and productivity, Fiedler's work aimed at establishing how the task structure, leader-member relations, and leader position power create situational favorability that influences