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Term of the Day

January 29, 2026

contingency theory of leadership

contingency theory of leadership

any of various models predicting that leadership performance depends on the interaction of the personal characteristics of the leader and the nature of the group situation. The prototypical contingency theory emerged from the conceptual analysis of leadership effectiveness developed by Fred Fiedler in the 1960s. Fiedler’s model differentiates between task-motivated and relationship-motivated leaders, as indicated by scores on the Least Preferred Coworker Scale, and predicts that task-motivated leaders will be most effective in extremely favorable or unfavorable group settings, whereas relationship-motivated leaders will be more effective in moderately favorable settings. Other models of this kind include the situational leadership theory, the substitutes for leadership theory, and the Vroom–Yetton–Jago decision model. See also cognitive resource theory.

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