Early work by Lewin and Lippit (1938) identified three distinct leadership styles of behavior: the democratic, the autocratic, and the laissez faire. The Ohio State studies (Hemphill and Coons, 1957) classified two different categories of leader behaviors, task-oriented behaviors called the initiation of structure and relationship-oriented behaviors called consideration. The third primary approach to leadership research, the contingency, came into prominence in the latter part of the last century. While prior studies had emphasized the qualities of a leader and their behaviors, contingency theories accounted for both leader and situational variables. Fiedler’s (1964) contingency model, House’s (1971) path goal theory of leadership, and Hershey and Blanchard’s (1977) situational leadership theory all take into account the situational factors impacting the leader and his choice of action. The contingency approach to leadership was an attempt to develop a more comprehensive picture of leadership, to take into account the intervening variables which might explain why behavioral effects on outcomes differ across situations.