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+1.301.405.5218
ila@ila-net.org
3119-F Susquehanna Hall
Univ. of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
United States
About
Our Home
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Fred Fiedler decided to become a psychologist before
he had even entered his teens. Post-World War I Vienna,
where Fiedler grew up, was richly flavored by the ideas
of Freud, Adler, Jung, and their followers, and the Fiedler
household contained many intriguing psychology books for
a boy his age. Fourteen years, five thousand miles, and
twenty-one jobs later (not counting military service in
the U.S. Army), Fiedler completed his PhD in Psychology
from the University of Chicago and embarked on a research
agenda that would paradigmatically shift how people think
about leadership.
For eighteen years, beginning with a 1954 study of the leadership
of high school basketball teams—which led to the development
of the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) score—Fiedler poked
and prodded the data from his various studies on leadership
effectiveness. As Fiedler writes, “A clean and elegant experiment
may be a thing of beauty and joy forever, but building a
sound theory is more like trying to solve a picture puzzle
in which half the pieces are missing… I am convinced that
data are adversaries that have to be beaten into submission…
I have been struck time and again by the realization that
I did not really begin to understand some of our research
results until many years and studies later. Research to
me is more like an archaeological dig than a mathematical
game. It takes a lot of shoveling and sifting, at least
in the area of leadership, before you really begin to hit
pay dirt” (1992 p. 315).
The result of Fiedler’s digging was the game-changing 1967
book A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness in which
he proposed the contingency model of leadership—the first
leadership theory to operationally measure the interaction
between a leader’s personality and situational control as
a predictor of leadership performance.
Shortly after its publication, Fielder moved from the University
of Illinois to the University of Washington where he is
currently Professor emeritus of Psychology and Professor
emeritus of Management and Organization. A prolific writer
and thinker, his achievements have been recognized by numerous
associations including the American Psychological Society,
the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology,
and the American Academy of Management.
Fiedler, F. (1992). “Life in a Pretzel-Shaped Universe,”
in Management laureates : a collection of autobiographical
essays. Greenwich, CT: Jai Press, 303-333.
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Susan Murphy
describes Fred Fiedler's contributions to the field of
leadership during his induction event at ILA 2010 Boston
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2010 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
