Contingency Approach to Management
| Author | Durward Hofler, Tim Barnett |
| Pages | 125-126 |
Page 125
The contingency approach to management is based on the idea that there is no one best way to manage and that to be effective, planning, organizing, leading, and controlling must be tailored to the particular circumstances faced by an organization. Managers have always asked questions such as "What is the right thing to do? Should we have a mechanistic or an organic structure? A functional or divisional structure? Wide or narrow spans of management? Tall or flat organizational structures? Simple or complex control and coordination mechanisms? Should we be centralized or decentralized? Should we use task or people oriented leadership styles? What motivational approaches and incentive programs should we use?" The contingency approach to management (also called the situational approach) assumes that there is no universal answer to such questions because organizations, people, and situations vary and change over time. Thus, the right thing to do depends on a complex variety of critical environmental and internal contingencies.
Classical management theorists such as Henri Fayol and Frederick Taylor identified and emphasized management principles that they believed would make companies more successful. However, the classicists came under fire in the 1950s and 1960s from management thinkers who believed that their approach was inflexible and did not consider environmental contingencies. Although the criticisms were largely invalid (both Fayol and Taylor, for example, recognized that situational factors were relevant), they spawned what has come to be called the contingency school of management. Research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s focused on situational factors that affected the appropriate structure of organizations and the appropriate leadership styles for different situations. Although the contingency perspective purports to apply to all aspects of management, and not just organizing and leading, there has been little development of contingency approaches outside organization theory and leadership theory. The following sections provide brief overviews of the contingency perspective as relevant to organization theory and leadership.
Environmental change and uncertainty, work technology, and the size of a company are all...
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