Fiedler Contingency Theory And Its Applications In School Management

This thesis aims to analyze the schoolmasters' leadership with Fiedler contingency theory, and discusses the theory itself in schools .On the basis of over 200 empirical study cases, both quantitative approach and qualitative approach have been used to serve the survey.Five scales used in quantitative research are "The least preferred coworker scale. Leader-member relations scale, Task structure scale, Position power scale, and Job descriptor scale ". 46 schoolmasters in Shanghai were involved in the survey .The scales measured the schoolmasters' leadership style, leadership situation and effectiveness and the correlation between leadership style and leadership effectiveness was calculated under 8 different leadership situations. The findings indicate that 1. Half of the candidates have relationship-motivation and work-motivation, who have higher level of situation control and leadership effectiveness; 2. Candidate's sex, age, education background and work experiences as leader don't bring significant influence on his leadership style, leadership situation aad effectiveness; 3.Schoolmasters in different schools have quite different leadership styles. Primary school schoolmasters' leadership style has more obvious relationship-motivation than high school schoolmasters. 4.Under 8 leadership situations, the correlation between leadership style and leadership effectiveness primarily matches the prediction of Fiedler contingency model and supports his theory. However, all the correlation coefficients are not significantQualitative research concerns two cases study in a natural approach, which observes two schoolmasters' present leadership effectiveness. Based on the data collected and the others' study, the dimensions of analysis are factors concerned leadership effectiveness and criteria for leadership effectiveness. The former includes: 1. leadership style (relationship-motivation and task-motivation ); 2, situation factors (leaders and members, colleagues, subordinate's relation, group atmosphere, subordinate comprehensive competence, and position power ). The latter covers subordinate satisfaction, leader's pressure and illness, evaluation and self-evaluation.Finally, supported by the findings, some analyses of Fiedler Contingency Theory are given in the paper, which are: 1. Its basic contingency idea has been proved in the study. 2. The actual predictive function of The Least preferred Coworker Scale has been examined. 3 The three factors in Fiedler's leadership situation cannot cover the actual leadership situation of schoolmaster's in actual situation. 4. Leadership style and leadership situation should depend on each other to some extent. Leadership style even affects and develops leadership situation. 5. Fiedler stresses that the criterion of leadership effectiveness should be objective quantitative group performance But this hypothesis is not practical in actual school situation. 6. Fiedler Contingency Theory's predictive function to leadership effectiveness needs to be further studied.