Control and Power in a Management Consultancy: Brownloaf Mactaggart Case Study

There have been numerous theories surrounding leadership, which attempt to explain which form is most effective in the workplace. A universalistic approach was once used to rationalize leadership and it was believed that successful leaders possessed certain common abilities and traits. However, today due to external factors such as globalization and advanced technologies, there has been an evolution towards a new paradigm of leadership. Subordinates want to feel empowered and engaged at the workplace and often the behaviors and relationships between leaders and their subordinates become important to understand in order to fully understand effective leadership. Contingency theories have been developed in which people began to look at the behavior of leaders in specific situations. Two such contingency theories are: Path-Goal and Hershey and Blanchard’s Situational Theory.

Leadership is, and always has been, a vital aspect of social and economic constructs. It is essential to the survival of societies, industries, organizations, and virtually any group of individuals that come together for a common purpose. However, leadership is difficult to define in a single, definitive sense. As such, theories of leadership, what constitutes a great leader, and how leaders are made have evolved constantly throughout history, and still continue to change today in hopes of improving upon our understanding of leadership, its importance, and how it can be most effective in modern organizational cultures.

When you consider Fiedler’s Contingency Theory, there are two types of leaders who are effective in different types of situations. There are the task-oriented leaders who are effective in scenarios which need structure and often clarification. These leaders are often found to be most effective in crisis type

The contingency approach, founded in the 1970’s differs from the behavioral approach. “Examining various situational variables is central to understanding leadership in organizations, according to the contingency theorist” (Stojkovic, Klofas & Kalinich, 2012). Fiedler’s Contingency Model is one of those contingency theories.

Both Fiedler’ model and LMX theory have strength and weakness. Fiedler’ model emphasizes the importance of both situation and leader’s characteristics in determining leader effectiveness. It stimulates a great deal of research and inspires the formulation of alternative contingency theory. On the weak side, the Fiedler model sometimes fails to reflect the personality traits that it intends to reflect. It has also gained criticism because of its implications on replacing the leader as the only way to solve the mismatch between leader orientation and unfavorable situation. The method of measuring

The contingency model of leadership is based upon the relationship between three aspects of leader-follower-situation model. Apart from this contingency model, leaders are assumed to act in a flexible manner.

The topic of leadership evokes curiosity about our leaders and their approaches in decision making, leadership styles and the effectiveness of their leadership. At time leaders are critiqued for their actions or views on different business affairs. In today’s working environment leaders set the tone, vision, and goals of any organization. Leadership has a huge impact on the culture of an organization and how people communicate within the organization (Northouse, 2009). The actions of leaders should inspire and positively impact their followers. The approach of leaders in handling adversities highlights many features of their character.

The trait leadership theory focuses on the individual leader’s personal characteristics as the basis of its investigations. It is one of the earliest leadership theories upon whose tenets many researches on leadership have been done. Although it is not very coherent, its heuristic nature has contributed to its significance in leadership research. Zaccaro and Klimoski (2002) define traits of reference to leadership as the stable personality characteristics, which result in a consistent leadership performance pattern, given different scenarios and groups. They include individual personalities, temperament, rationale, prowess, as well as cognitive abilities. Initially, the theory explored both physical and psychological characteristics that tell apart leaders from non-leaders.

“Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.” John Maxwell. Not everyone is equipped to be a leader. Great leaders have the ability to establish a set direction and principles to guide their companies in an efficient way. It is believed that certain people possess traits that make them good leaders and researcher focus in personality, social, physical, or intellectual qualities that would identify them as leaders from the rest of the people. A few ideas have been developed over the years in the effort of define leadership. One of this is the Fiedler contingency model and Hersey and Blanchard’s Situation Theory. One of the situations that comes to mind is the story found in the Bible about Joshua when he was selected to spy the land of Canaan, and return to report on what was found, the land flowed with milk and honey. While others may only see problems before it true leaders can see possibilities and endure the opposition until they see an open door.

The Contingency Theory applied to factors unique to each situation to determine whether specific leader characteristics and behaviors will be effective. Researched findings credit Fiedler 's contingency theory as the first to specify how situational factors interact with leader traits and behavior to influence leadership effectiveness. This theory suggests high interest in the situation determines the effectiveness of task- and person-oriented leader behavior.

Moreover, the trait approach gives a deeper understanding of the leader element in the leadership process by emphasising exclusively on the leader, (Gore et al, 2011). The trait theory does not offer hypotheses about the role of situational variance or characteristic of the followers. Instead, this approach provide information about leaders, and about which traits cause which behaviours and that certain set of traits are central to the leadership process and play an indispensible part of effective leadership.

Fielder’s contingency theory argues the effectiveness of a leader is contingent to leader ship style and the extent the leadership situation gives him or her influence and control over outcomes.

Alderfer explains that as one move up the ladder, the more difficult it becomes to achieve needs at that level. For example, the complexity of satisfying relatedness needs at the work place is intensified by differences of individual needs. This is because people working together at any institution, are at different stages of fulfillment or regression. Some may be aiming at the big shot while others may be striving to achieve existence needs. It is therefore very important for managers to address the three needs so as to alleviate any impending conflict among workers. Some workers may be more inclined to growth needs than existence or relatedness needs; providing a platform for their growth is therefore very necessary to avert depression.

This theory is based on the premise that there are certain personality characteristics that are essential for a person to possess in order to be a leader. The main emphasis is on what the person is in terms of a constellation of personality traits. This theory searches for that set of universal leadership traits that will assure success. Numerous traits have been suggested: courage, integrity, loyalty, charisma, ambition, intelligence, honesty, clairvoyance, persistence, arrogance, health, political skill, confidence and vision.

People have always asked if there is any style of leadership that is most effective. Nevertheless, numerous theories and models have been created to show that there is no style of leadership that is the best. Rather, styles of leadership need to adjust depending on the variables such as the leader, the situation, the subordinate, the task, the environment and other factors. Paul Hersey, Kenneth H. Blanchard, and Dewey E. Johnson noted that if the leader’s style of behavior is appropriate or matches the situation it is considered effective. If it is not appropriate to a given situation, it is deemed ineffective. The difference between the effective and ineffective styles is often not the actual behavior of the leader, but the appropriateness of that behavior to the environment in which it is used. In reality, the third dimension is the environment.