Management and Organizational Studies 2181A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Fred Fiedler, Transactional Leadership, Contingency Theory

• School: Western University
• Department: Management and Organizational Studies
• Course: Management and Organizational Studies 2181A/B
• Professor: Victoria Digby

Document Summary

Leadership is the influence that particular individuals exert on the goal achievement of others in an organizational context. Although any organizational member can influence other members, individuals with titles such as manager, executive supervisor, and department head are in assigned leadership roles and are expected to exert formal leadership and influence others. Throughout history, social observers have been fascinated by obvious examples of successful interpersonal influence. The implicit assumption is that those who become leaders and do a good job of it possess a special set of traits that distinguish them from the masses of followers. Trait theories of leadership, however, did not receive serious scientific attention until the. During world war i, the us military began to search for those traits which would help in identifying future officers. Traits are individual characteristics such as physical characteristics, intellectual ability, and personality.