A Test of the Poor Leader-Member Relation Cells of the Contingency Model on Elementary School Children

The problem was to investigate the 4 poor leader-member relation cells of Fiedler's contingency model on fourth-grade elementary school groups. High and low least-preferred co-worker (LPC) leaders with strong and weak power were compared on structured and unstructured group tasks. When the task was structured, high LPC leaders were more effective than low regardless of position power. For the unstructured task, high LPC leaders were more effective than low for strong position power on 2 of 4 measures used, while low LPC leaders were more effective than high for weak position power on 1 of 4 measures.