Características empreendedoras de gestores chefes de departamento diante da concepção de uma universidade empreendedora

Abstract

Universities, natural sources of knowledge generation, have, in the world, the important function of economic and social development and thus be called Entrepreneurial University (UE). Given this, the entrepreneurial behavior, emerges as an important factor for the achievement of these objectives. In this context, managers, heads of department for being in the focus of institutional processes, play a prominent role, for the operation and strengthening of the culture of an entrepreneurial university. Thus, this study seeks to analyze the entrepreneurial behavior of department heads of UFSM, and its influence on the perception of these managers regarding the EU. In order to do so, it adopted a qualitative and quantitative approach, and the triangulation of the data occurred. The quantitative study was carried out with the whole population, 85 heads of departments of the UFSM, with 59 of them, effectively, answered the questionnaire. As a result, it was observed that among the heads of departments, 45.76% are between 41 and 50 years, 57.63% are males and 64.41% are married. The majority (76.27%) have someone from the family who exercised or performs entrepreneurial activity. The Goal Setting with a mean of 20.61 and the Information Search with a mean of 20.47 were the entrepreneurial behavioral characteristics (SCC) with the highest scores among the 59 respondents, on the other hand the Persuasion and Network of Contacts (16, 54) and Running Calculated Risks (18.58) were the ones with lower scores. In the qualitative approach, 12 department heads were interviewed and five non-a priori categories were identified: Lack of Preparation and Learning, People Management, Entrepreneurial Behavioral Characteristics, Lack of Planning and Extension Activities as an Entrepreneurial University. In triangulation, it was verified that there was adhesion between the CCEs surveyed quantitatively and the non-a priori categories of the qualitative study. When associated with the results found in the quantitative and qualitative approaches, with the results of the 2016 Institutional Self-Assessment of the heads of departments, it was inferred qualitatively analyzing the data, that apparently the level of intensity of the presence of the CCEs has influence in the level of perception aspects related to the entrepreneurial university. On the other hand, the quantitative result and the analysis of self-evaluation lead us to infer that the perceived reality is not always supported by praxis, and that the low presence of CCEs in department heads leads to a partial view of the role of the entrepreneurial university. Associating the results obtained in the studies of the heads of departments with those of the directors of the UFSM, it was concluded that the CCEs influence the perception with respect to the EU. The vision for the EU in the two groups corresponds to extension activities and economic development provided only by the money injected in the region, due to the existence of the university. Thus, it is suggested the development of CCEs among managers, in order to promote the change in the perception of the EU, seen in this study as extension, to that which also promotes economic development.