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Journal
of
Applied
Fsycholoi
1978, Vol.
63, No. 3,
"'
Manipulating
the
Situation
to Fit the
Leader's
Style:
Two
Validation
Studies
of
LEADER
MATCH
Louis
S.
Csoka
and
Paul
M.
Bons
United States Military Academy
West Point,
New
York
Two
studies
are
cited
in
which LEADER MATCH,
a
self-programmed leader-
ship training manual,
was
used with student military leaders. Twenty-six subjects
in
a
controlled experiment
and 37 in a field
study attempted
to
manipulate their
own
leadership situation based
on the
prescribed contingency model match
be-
tween their leader style
and the
favorableness
of
their situation. Both studies
matched experimental subjects against control groups over
a
3-month
and
6-week
period, respectively. Rated performance
of the
experimental subjects
was
com-
pared
to the
performance
of
control subjects
at the
completion
of
each study.
In
addition,
the
subjects
in the
experimental study were required
to
provide
an
analysis
of the
process
by
which they manipulated their situation
to
match their
leader style. Results showed that leaders
who
used
the
manual, when compared
with
the
matched controls, were rated significantly higher than their contempo-
raries
in
comparative performance ratings. Analysis
of
individual strategies pro-
vides
for
comments
on the
effectiveness,
limitations,
and
utility
of the
pro-
grammed leadership training text.
The
contingency model
of
leadership
effec-
tiveness (Fiedler, 1967)
has
long contended
that
effectiveness
of
leaders
is a
function
of
the
leaders' motivational style
as
measured
by
the
Least-Preferred Co-worker (LPC)
scale
and the
favorableness
of
their
work
situation.
A
leader
may be
either relationship
motivated
or
task motivated
as
determined
by
asking
the
leader
to
evaluate
his or her
least-preferred
co-worker
on a
bipolar,
18-
item, adjective scale. According
to
Fiedler,
leaders with relatively positive descriptions
of
their
least-preferred co-worker (high LPC)
tend
to be
relationship motivated, whereas
leaders with very negative descriptions (low
LPC) tend
to be
task
motivated.
Situation
favorableness
is
conceptually
de-
nned
as the
degree
to
which
the
situation
provides
the
leader with power
and
influence
(control).
It has
been measured
on the
basis
of
three subdimensions: leader-member
rela-
Requests
for
reprints should
be
sent
to
Paul
M.
Bons, United
States
Military
Academy,
Department
of
Behavioral Science
and
Leadership, West Point,
New
York
10996.
tions, task structure,
and
position power.
When these subdimensions
are
arrayed
on a
continuum,
they
define
three major situational
conditions: favorable
(in
which
the
leader
has
high control), moderately favorable,
and un-
favorable
(in
which
the
leader
has low
con-
trol).
Operationally,
a
very favorable situa-
tion
is one in
which
the
leader
has
good
leader-member relations,
a
structured task,
and
strong position power. Essentially,
the
contingency model predicts
that
low-LPC
leaders
perform
better than their high-LPC
counterparts
in
situations
that
are
very
favorable
and
unfavorable, whereas high-LPC
leaders
perform
best
in
moderately favorable
situations. (For greater
detail
in
determining
LPC,
situational
favorableness,
and the
rela-
tionship between them
the
reader should
refer
to
Fiedler, 1967, 1972)
Traditionally, leadership training
has
been
oriented
toward improving leader
effective-
ness
by
altering
the
leader's
behavior
and/or
personality.
The
leadership literature, how-
ever, repeatedly draws attention
to the
fact
that
leadership training
as
presently consti-
tuted does
not
seem
to
improve organiza-
Copyright
1978
by the
American
Psychological
Association,
Inc.
0021-9010/78/6303-0295$00.75
295
