Contingency

Approach
Dean, Jonathan, Angus and James
Definition of topic
-> Contingency approach stresses the need for flexibility and adaptation of management
practices and ideas to suit changing circumstances.

-> Contemporary management approaches represent major innovations in ways of

thinking about management and appropriate management practices. One of the most
important contemporary viewpoints is the contingency approach to management. It
stresses the need for flexibility and the adaption of management practices and ideas to
suit changing circumstances.
Explanation of topic
- The stress for management to adapt to changed circumstances to best suit the
business.

- If a problem is faced by the business, the management sector is required to adapt and
change business operations to counteract the possible effect a circumstance may have.

- To adopt this approach managers must sample all the past and present ideas of offer;
some refer this to the smorgasbord approach.

- Contingency theorists stress that the traditional classical approach to management are
no longer adequate for our needs today.

- They believe that management must adopt a wide range of management approaches
Key aspects of topic
- Adapting to changing circumstances No two situations are absolutely identical,
therefore each situation requires its own unique solution.

- For example, you may have chosen to construct a building a certain way with certain
strategies, but that same approach may not work for different buildings because they
require a completely different approach.

- Advocates of the contingency approach believe that managers need to be adaptable

and flexible in their technique to solving problems.

- No one wants a manager who is dogmatic and inflexible.

Activities
1. Watch the BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill 2010 video, as a manager what managerial approach would you take (classic,
behavioral or contingency) that would be best suited to solve this tragedy, and why?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJNyA4WmJyY

^Open discussion amongst class^

Real life business examples
Steve Jobs

there is no one right way of leading and that a leader must adjust their style depending on the context
Activity
Question:
You are the owner of medium sized marketing company with 50 employees, 10
of your employees spend their entire 8hr shift putting data into a computer and
only leave their desk to have a 30min lunch break, leaving a total of 7.5hrs on a
computer per day. The Government has introduced a new health & safety
legislation, which states that data entry employees can only spend a total of
5hrs on the computer per day, entering data.
Being a manager using contingency management, how would you work with
this new legislation?
Summary and comparison of management approaches

Classical Approach Organisation and Organisational Levels of

allocation of staff Structure Management

- Programmed staff - Hierarchical pyramid - Many management

performing simple, structure levels with clearly
repetitive tasks distinguishable
- Strict channels of organisational
- Division of labour into responsibility for all positions
functional units levels of management
- Actions decided by
- Appraisal or reward - Considerable management
based on achievement management and
for production supervisory control at - Bureaucratic
each level management believed
to be the most effective
means
Summary and comparison of management approaches

Behavioral Approach Organisation and Organisational Levels of

allocation of staff Structure Management

- Recognition that - Hierarchical pyramid - Many management

workers have both structure and supervisory levels
social and economic
needs (social life and - More communication - Development of
income) with workers but still no peoples management
participative skills, particularly
- Teamwork and partnership communication and
informal working social motivation skills
groups are important
for productivity
Summary and comparison of management approaches

Contingency Organisation and Organisational Levels of

Approach allocation of staff Structure Management

- Flexibility and - May be a pyramid - Depends on the

adaption of a variety of businesss
ideas and principles - The structure requirements (the
that are pursued to suit depends on the nature of the operation
the businesss businesss and abilities of
requirements requirements employees)