Fred Edward Fiedler

Fred Edward Fiedler (born July 13, 1922 in Vienna ; † June 8, 2017 ) was one of the leading industrial and organizational psychologists of the 20th century. He is known as the founder of the contingency theory and due to his research on human traits and personal traits of managers and leadership styles and behavior. In 1967 he introduced the well-known Fiedlerian contingency model.

Life

• In 1938 he emigrated to the United States .
• In 1940, Fiedler graduated from high school and had a number of simple jobs in Indiana , Michigan, and California and a job with the Michigan Electric Company.
• In the summer of 1942, Fiedler enrolled in engineering courses at Michigan West College of Education (now Michigan West University, in Kalamazoo), but then traveled to the University of Chicago.
• He served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945 and was trained in telephone communications decryption and public safety.
• On April 14, 1946, Fiedler married Judith M. Joseph. They have worked together in the field of research and have had four children over the years.
• He later developed an interest in psychology . In November 1945, Fiedler returned to the University of Chicago and continued his psychology studies in January 1946. In 1947 he received an MBA in industrial and organizational psychology, which was followed by a dissertation in clinical psychology in 1949 on the effects of preventive psychotherapy .
• Fiedler studied further under Lee Cronbach and Donald Campbell , Louis Leon Thurstone and Thelma G. Thurstone , Donald Fiske , Carl Rogers and William Foote Whyte .
• His comparative studies of therapeutic relationships, influenced by experts and laypeople of the psychoanalytic , non-directives and the school of Alfred Adler , are his most frequently cited works.
• In 1947 he became an associate director with a marine exploration contract at the University of Illinois (Faculty of Education). His work with Donald Fiske and Lee Cronbach during this period established his lifelong interest in leadership.
• From 1950 to 1969, Fiedler served on the faculty of the University of Illinois, where he directed the Laboratory for Group Efficacy Research (GERL) and was appointed Dean of the Social, Differential, Personality, and Industrial Psychology Faculties. His wife worked as a research sociologist in the university's own research center.
• In 1969 Fiedler went to the University of Washington , where he worked until his retirement in 1993. There he set up an organizational research group and headed the department for group effectiveness research.

Fiedler's work

Towards the end of the 1940s, Fiedler moved the emphasis on character traits and personal traits of superiors in certain leadership styles and the behavior of superiors for leadership research.

The performance curve he developed as a function of individual dissatisfaction (so-called performance bosom ) says that people who are completely satisfied and completely satisfied do not feel any incentive to perform and that, with increasing dissatisfaction, a measurable increase in performance is initially recorded. The fear of losing satisfaction is enough to achieve a certain level of motivation.

If dissatisfaction continues to rise, however, the performance curve remains almost linear over a longer increase in personal dissatisfaction, while very pronounced dissatisfaction even has a demotivating effect and thus reduces performance. Only when personal dissatisfaction rises to such an extent that feelings of panic and fear begin to dominate does the willingness to perform increases enormously (performance reserve), only to collapse suddenly and completely when the personal performance limit is exceeded.

According to the Ethics Association of German Business (EVW eV), the work of Fiedler helps to understand the poor results of incorrect personnel management by many superiors who want their employees to achieve a high increase in performance regardless of employee satisfaction towards their limits (overtime, project responsibility , Customer acquisition) and actually achieve no increase in performance. The observation that an increase in personal dissatisfaction over wide areas does not lead to a measurable increase in performance therefore has the consequence that the relative satisfaction of the employee is further reduced and the undirected additional workload without individual consideration of the unused resources only leads to demotivation in the individual.

The further increase in performance due to the activation of the employee's performance reserves is based on the motivation to act to secure survival or job security and is hardly manageable due to the tight limit load (see diagram). On the basis of Fiedler's findings, it leads to a sudden and unpredictable total collapse of top performance in the event of absolute dissatisfaction due to excessive dissatisfaction or fear or panic in the specific work situation.

Fiedler found out as early as 1953 that effective teams consist of people who keep a mental distance and only concentrate on the task (so-called Fiedler values). An employee is only capable of working in a team if he and his colleagues fight a problem, but never against people. According to this, an employee is only able to work in a team if he solves a problem optimally with others, even if he doesn't like the others at all (see Emotional Intelligence ).

From this, Rupert Lay developed further insights into the ability to work in a team, according to which this does not mean having to be suitable for groups or even easy to care for. At most, a certain degree of adaptability is required. The ability to work in a team is much more characterized by networked information processing, the freeing up of creativity (i.e. realistic thinking against rules) and the progress in knowledge to develop realistic solutions.

From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, Fiedler turned to leadership interests and contingency models. One of the earliest and best known is its contingency model of leadership effectiveness. Published in 1967 as the theory of leadership effectiveness, the model immediately attracted attention as the first leadership theory to be developed in a company, as it allowed the interaction between the leadership personality and situation control as a prognosis of leadership performance.

Fiedler was known worldwide for his books, lectures and management consulting . In his work, he has received research grants and commitments from numerous government agencies and private donors. He held research contacts at the University of Amsterdam from 1957 to 1958, at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium from 1963 to 1964 and at Templeton University , Oxford from 1986 to 1987. He has worked as a consultant for the agencies of various federal and local governments and private companies worked in the United States and abroad.

Even in retirement, he continues to inspire people to explore leadership and related topics. He brought the contingency theory of leadership into the scientific discussion very early in his career and has spent years willingly discussing it with his critics. Fiedler offered additional research and alternative explanations based on his own investigations and the growing field of knowledge.

Recognitions and Associations

• Fiedler was recognized by the American Psychological Association for his research in 1971 and for his contributions to military psychology in 1979.
• He received the Stogdill Prize for Notable Contributions to Leadership in 1978.
• The American Academy of Management honored Fiedler as a notable educator in management in 1993.
• The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology recognized his outstanding scientific contributions in 1996.
• In 1999 the American Psychological Society presented Fiedler with its James McKeen Cattell Award .
• Fiedler was a member of the International Association of Applied Psychology and one of the former presidents of this organization in the field of organizational psychology.
• He was a member of the American Psychological Association and
• Member of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology as well
• Member of the American Midwest Psychological Association.
• Fiedler has authored or co-authored more than 200 scientific publications and several books. His articles have been widely cited and published by most of the recognized journals in the fields of psychology, leadership, and management.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary , legacy.com, accessed July 25, 2017