Fiedler's Contingency Model of Leadership Effectiveness: Possible Implications for a Manager.

The current trend within the Department of Defense is to reduce the force structure without impairing mission accomplishment. To this end, emphasis is being placed upon improving the management of people. Managers are being asked to do more with fewer personnel. If they are to be expected to achieve more with fewer people, then there should be an organized effort to provide those managers with methods to improve managing human resources. This paper briefly traces the emergence since the end of World War II of certain aspects of behavioral science as they apply to the manager. The result of the post World War II studies led social scientists to seriously consider the possibilities of the inter-action between leaders and groups in various situations as a fruitful area for extensive research. Within this general research area this paper reviews one contemporary theory, Fiedlers Contingency Model of Leadership Effectiveness, to determine its possible applicability to the program manager.