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Published by Abey Francis in Management Principles

Contingency Approach to
Management
The contingency approach to management emerged from the real life experience of
managers who found that no single approach worked consistently in every situation.
The basic idea of this approach is that number management technique or theory is
appropriate in all situations. The main determinants of a contingency are related to the
external and internal environment of an organisation.

The process, quantitative, behavioral, and systems approaches to management did not
integrate the environment. The often assumed that their concepts and techniques have
universal applicability. For example the process theorists often assumes that strategic
planning applies to all situations; the quantitative experts generally feel that linear
programming can be used under all conditions; the behavioral theorist usually
advocates participative goal setting for all superior-subordinate pairs; and the system
advocates tend to emphasize the need for computerized information flows in all
situations. On the other hand practicing managers find out that a particular concept or
technique from the various approached just does not work effectively in various
situations. The theorists accuse practitioners of not applying the technique properly,
and the practitioners accuse the theorists of being unrealistic. The contingency
approach does incorporate the environment and attempts to bridge this existing theory-
practice gap.

Contingency approach to management advocates that managerial actions and

organisational design must be appropriate to the given situation and a particular action
is valid only under certain conditions. There is no one best approach to management
and it all depends on the situation. In other words, managerial action is contingent
upon external environment. There is no one best approach for all situations. What a
manager does depends upon a given situation and there is an active inter-relationship
between the variables in a situation and the managerial action. Contingency theory
attempts to analyse and understand these interrelationships with a view towards taking
the specific managerial actions necessary to deal with the issue. This approach is both
analytical and situational, with the purpose of developing a practical answer to the
question at hand.

There are three major elements of the overall conceptual framework for contingency
approach to management; the environment, management concepts and techniques
and the contingent relationship between them.

Features of Contingency Approach to

Management
1. Management is externally situational: the conditions of the situation will
determine which techniques and control system should be designed to fit the
particular situation.
2. Management is entirely situational.
3. There is no best way of doing anything.
4. One needs to adapt himself to the circumstances.
5. It is a kind of “if” “then” approach.
6. It is a practically suited.
7. Management policies and procedures should respond to environment.
8. Managers should understand that there is no best way of managing. It dispels
the universal validity of principles.

Superiority of Contingency Approach

Clear-cut emergence of contingency approach to management was noticed after the
popularization of systems approach. The contingency theorists accept open adaptive
nature of the organisation and the interdependency between various sub-systems of the
organisation. But they have pointed out that the systems approach does not adequately
spell out the precise relationship between organisation and its environment. It is too
abstract and difficult to apply in practice. They have tried to modify and operationalise
the system framework.

The systems approach to management takes a broader view of organisational variables

and employs a comprehensive model of human beings. It takes into account the full
range of human needs and motives. On the other hand, contingency approach to
management is concerned mainly with the structural adaptation of organisation to the
task environment. But both these viewpoints are not mutually exclusive. They should be
treated as complementary to each other. The manager should use systems and other
approaches under the framework of contingency approach.

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View Comments (1)

Aziz Ariaey says: June 13, 2011 at 5:02 pm

I need an executive information about research methodology, Management principles and data
analyses.
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