Oakland Athletics Over the Past Decade, Professional Baseball Has Evolved

Oakland Athletics Over the past decade, professional baseball has evolved into an increasingly dysfunctional, sharply divided game of big-time haves and small-time have-nots. A few big market teams like the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers leverage huge television contracts to acquire top talent at top salaries. Clubs in smaller cities with meager budgets make do with what's left. This trend has not proven true for the Oakland Athletics. From 2000 to 2006, the A's finished first in their division 5 times and second 2 times, all the while spending about one-third of the money as the Yankees on player payroll. The team's success as a small-market team is credited to its general manager Billy Beane. Billy Beane is a man who knows how to do more with less. He relentlessly exploits market mismatches by mining data his rivals ignore and by scooping up assets that others have undervalued, an approach made famous in Michael Lewis's Moneyball . He realizes that every player must be evaluated according to his long-term economic impact on the team. People who work with Beane describe him as "monomaniacal, ardent, and controlling." Refer to Oakland Athletics. By describing Beane as ardent and controlling, his co-workers are using ____ to define its leader.

A) trait theory
B) path-goal theory
C) motivation decision theory
D) contingency theory
E) situational leadership theory