Leadership Essay

The University of Queensland

MGTS 1301

Leadership Essay

Topic 3 – The influence of the situation on the effectiveness of a leadership style

Table of Contents

Section 1: Introduction 3

Section 2: Leadership Theory 3

Article 1 3

Article 2 4

Article 3 5

Section 3: Leadership in Practice 6

Section 4: Conclusion 8

Reference List 10

Appendix 11

Section 1: Introduction

There are many different approaches and theories for leadership, which is noticed even in today’s organisations. Such as, contingency approaches, which deeply focus on how leadership behaviours are, in relation to situational attributes and under what circumstances is a certain style more preferable to others (Campling, et al., 2008). Fiedler’s contingency model, Hersey-Blanchard situational model, House’s Path-goal theory and Vroom-Jago leader-participation model are examples of such contingency approaches. This essay, will explore thoroughly in contingency approaches, as it examines the effectiveness of various leadership style in relation to situations at hand, using the three scholarly articles; Leadership Quarterly - Situational Leadership Theory: A test of three versions, Leadership Quarterly-Leadership ambiguity in universities and K–12 schools and the limits of contemporary leadership theory, Leadership Quarterly – The Role of Leadership in Emergent, Self-Organisation. The business article How to Keep Your Star Performers in Trying Times from the Harvard Business Review, will be used as an example to demonstrate how leadership theories can be effective and applied to the practice of leadership situations in such real organisations.

Section 2: Leadership Theory

Article 1

In the article The Leadership Quarterly - Situational Leadership Theory: A test of three versions (2009) by Geir Thompson and Robert P Vecchio, examined the situational leadership theory (SLT), based on three different versions derived...