ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Leadership and organisational culture
Wexley Pharma's board considers appointing a chief executive. Fiedler's contingency theory suggests that leader effectiveness depends on matching the leader's orientation to situational favourability. The situation is highly unfavourable: poor leader-member relations, an unstructured task and weak position power. According to the theory, which leader would be most effective?
A task-oriented, low LPC leader would be most effective. Fiedler's contingency theory finds such leaders perform best when the situation is either highly favourable or highly unfavourable, while relationship-oriented leaders do better in moderate situations. Fiedler also treated style as fixed, so the situation should be changed or the leader matched to it.
- AA task-oriented (low LPC) leaderCorrect
- BA relationship-oriented (high LPC) leader
- CAny leader after training in situational flexibility
- DA leader who changes style daily to suit each follower
Explanation
Fiedler found task-oriented, low LPC leaders perform best in very favourable and very unfavourable situations, and relationship-oriented, high LPC leaders perform best in moderately favourable ones. The situation here is very unfavourable, so a task-oriented leader fits. Fiedler also held that leader style is relatively fixed, so flexible-style options contradict the theory.
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