Fiedler's Contingency Theory in MBA

When business management students first learn about Fiedler's Contingency Theory, they generally think of the more readily used form of the word "contingency". Essentially, they think that a contingency is an something which is dependent upon or caused by some other event. Groups of people, leadership, or relationships seldom come to mind. And yet, as its very root, the base-word contingent means a group of people in contact with each other, with connection or dependence among the followers and their leader.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, industrial and business psychologists such as Fiedler and Woodward started to study the leadership and behavior styles of managers. Before Fiedler's study, 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 Fiedler's contingency theory is that it has influenced almost all modern management theories by denying the existence of a singular ideal organizational approach.
The basis of Fiedler's contingency model 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.