Relação do estilo de liderança com a adoção de inovações gerenciais em uma universidade pública federal

Abstract

Although universities are recognized as being among the most stable and change-resistant institutions, transformations have taken place in the last decades that strongly impact the way they operate and how they are managed. Seeking to meet political and social demands universities are articulated to improve their structures, processes and practices through the implementation of managerial innovations. An important agent in the literature as having great importance in this process are the managers, who must exercise their leadership in order to converge the efforts of the team members in the adoption of innovations that can make the institutions more efficient. In this sense, due to the importance of the subject and the scarcity of research that deals with the relationship between the management style of the manager and the adoption of innovations by the team in public universities, this research aims to analyze, in the perception of the leadership style adopted by the managers is related to the degree of adoption of managerial innovations in a Federal Public University. To fulfill this purpose, an empirical, descriptive and quantitative research was carried out. As a data collection technique, a survey was performed, the research instrument being composed of two scales. The first one was aimed at assessing the transformational, transactional style of leadership and also the manager's lack of leadership and the second captured the evaluations of the adoption of managerial innovations. A total of 240 professors and administrative technicians from UFSM participated in the study, with administrative and academic units. The results show that, in the perception of the respondents, managers combine moderately traits of transformational, transactional leadership and lack of leadership. The highest average component was the idealized influence of the manager, and there was a positive evaluation of the fact that they created a good working environment and were respected by the team. However, there was an ambiguity regarding the fact that they seek to encourage new ways of thinking about habitual activities, prepare the team for future challenges and give meaning to the work done. With regard to the adoption of innovations, there is a moderate perception of practices related to the climate of innovation support, work organization, responsibilities and decision making, knowledge management and learning and relation with the external environment. When the relationship between the constructs was tested, a strong correlation was observed between the adoption of innovations and the transformational leadership, a moderate correlation with the transactional leadership, and a non-significant correlation with the absence of leadership. Expanding the analysis, the variable of transformational leadership with greater emphasis was the inspiring motivation, which had strong relation as responsibilities and decision making, moderate with the climate of support to innovation and work organization and weak with the relation with the external environment. It should be concluded that, although it is important to perform the tasks satisfactorily, managers should seek to review their practices, encourage new perspectives, value team ideas and give meaning to work, seeking to create a shared vision of future that converges efforts to overcome the present / future challenges.