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Otemon Economic Studies, 8 (1975) THE LIFE CYCLE THEORY OF LEADERSHIP AND MANAGERIAL THINKING PROCESS KEN-ICHI MURAYAMA* 1. Introduction—Integration of Several Theories on Leader Behaviors. Of late, several theories on business administration have successively been published, but it nas become increasingly difficult to integrally grasp the true ideas of such theories, because they are considered from different viewpoints among them. The idea of integrating such theories was announced" in the past from the managerial thinking administra- tion, and efforts have been made in the establishment of a unified theory. In 1972, P. Hersey and K. H. Blanchard made public an idea which was almost similar to that of the present author in reference to the leadership theory (4,). This is the lifé cycle theory of leadership, which substantiate the fact that it is a mistaken way to follow the leaders’ ideal behaviors as shown in conventional leadership theories, ie. the System 4), or the Managerial Grid(4)”. _This also stresses to convert the type of leaders dependent on the demand of environment, by quoting the thought of F. E. Fiedler(,) or of W. J. Reddin()®, and by taking a hint from the ideas of A. H. Maslow(@,) © and C. Argyris (:):°, further developing a new thought which the behavior of a leader should be converted following a certain rule dependent on the maturity of followers. However, without no mention about the idea on its conver- sion. afterward, this thought also reaches one type, which result in only one variation of the conventional types to follow after one ideal behavior. This thought, however, may explain various contradictions of conventio- nal leadership theories, each of which may be applied to the frame of the life cycle theory of leadership. However, it is not clear on what theoretical basis the leader should take such a behavior in each stage of the progress of the cycle. Thus, for further developing the life cycle * Associate Professor of Business Administration Otemon Gakuin University €1) 
