ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Qualities of leadership
Dunmore Ltd's production director leads a team that dislikes him personally, accepts his authority only reluctantly, and works on an ambiguous, unstructured task with no standard procedures. According to Fiedler's contingency theory, the situation's favourableness and the implied effective leader are best described as:
The situation is highly unfavourable because relations are poor, the task is unstructured and authority is weakly accepted. Fiedler's theory predicts that task-oriented, low LPC leaders perform best at both favourable and unfavourable extremes, while relationship-oriented leaders do best in moderately favourable situations.
- AHighly favourable situation; a task-oriented (low LPC) leader is most effective
- BModerately favourable situation; a relationship-oriented (high LPC) leader is most effective
- CHighly unfavourable situation; a relationship-oriented leader is most effective because trust must be rebuilt
- DHighly unfavourable situation; a task-oriented (low LPC) leader is most effectiveCorrect
Explanation
Fiedler measures favourableness by leader-member relations, task structure and position power. Poor relations, unstructured task and (implied) weak acceptance of authority make the situation highly unfavourable. In both extremes, low LPC (task-oriented) leaders perform best; high LPC leaders do best in moderate situations. Option C wrongly applies a relationship style to an extreme.
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