Thursday, 22 August 2013

No One Best Way To Do Things : Contingency Theory

                                                     No One Best Way To Do Things


The contingency approach is  a method of business management derived from the contingency theory . The contingency theory assumes that there is no "best way " to manage a business because businesses and situations differ to a great extent . A management approach that works for one situation may not work for another .
The contingency viewpoint focuses on management's ability to achieve alignments and good fits between employees and circumstances. This results in an employer discussing specific situations with employees to determine the best solutions to problems .






We can understand the concept of  contingency  approach with an example :
Let us consider the case of two students one with high IQ and other with low IQ . A teacher is teaching both the student . Because of their different IQ level teacher has to deal with them with different approach . First student is consistently performing in the class tests and second student finds it difficult to get atleast passing marks .
Teacher's approach to first student is to do critical analysis of his performance in tests so as to help him in achieving excellence . Whereas for second student teacher has to change his approach , he needs to motivate the second student . Despite his abysmal performance in tests teacher need to keep his motivation level high by appreciating his efforts , giving rewards etc .
By doing so teacher gains confidence and trust of second student , meanwhile teacher can work upon the weak areas of second student and help him in his studies.
Here , two different approaches are used by teacher to solve the problem .




Another example of shoe maker  :
A shoe manufacturer faced a problem of decreasing profit.
This problem can be looked from different dimensions :
from classical management theory : Time study from the belief that the decline in profit is due to lower productivity on the part of worker .
from behavioural management theory : may attempt to involve  worker more fully in decisions concerning  the methods to use in producing the shoes based on the premise that this will motivate workers to produce more .
from systems theory : may establish a committee of sales and productivity personnel to coordinate the production and distribution of goods under the assumption that large inventories are responsible for the decline in profits.
contingency approach enable the manager to examine the situation and to determine the cause of decreased profits before a new procedure or program is implemented .

Contingency theory is designed to provide the manager with the capabilities to examine numerous possible solutions to a problem .

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