Contingency Management Approach

Contingency Approach (or Contingency Theory) emerged, together with Systemic Approach, as a result of the detection of several restrictions of the past management schools, namely the Classic School and Behavioral School.

Contingency Approach presents as basis principle the fact that the organizations don’t act isolated, being subjected to several kinds of contingencies (contingency means something whose occurrence is uncertain or casual being its confirmation possible only by the experience and the evidence and not by the reason). Everything that happens on its external surroundings, either at a sociological level, technological, political or demographic can condition its activity. So, according to the Contingency Approach, it’s not possible to establish one unique way to manage organizations: each specific situation requires a specific kind of management.

These conclusions were obtained from studies made by several investigators (among which Tom Burns, G. M. Stalker, Alfred D. Chandler, Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch), who focused in the analyses of the environmental impact on the organization’s functioning.