Contingency Leadership Theory in MBA

When students of business management first hear of Contingency Theory, they usually think of the common use of the word "contingency". In other words, they expect that a contingency is an unexpected event or something which is dependent or caused by another event. Leadership, relationships, or groups of people, rarely come to mind. And yet, at its very root, the word contingent means a group of people in contact with each other, with dependence or connection between leaders and followers.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, industrial and business psychologists such as Woodward and Fiedler began to study the behavior and leadership styles of managers. Previously, industrial psychologists focused on the personal traits of successful leaders and believed in an ideal science of organization. They felt there was a best way to run a company or group which produced the best decisions and most effective business practices. The importance of contingency theories is that they have influenced almost all modern theories of management by denying the existence of any one ideal approach to organization.
The basis of Fiedler's theory involved assessing a potential leader with a scale of work style ranging from task-oriented at one end, to relationship-oriented at the other. Then contingent on factors such as stress level in the organization, type of work, flexibility of the group to change, and use of technology, a customized coordination of resources, people, tasks and the correct style of management could be implemented.
Leadership as a wide spectrum of possible effective styles was a ground-breaking idea. It is still central in modern management theories which reject rigid assumptions about ideal management.