Representações sociais e liderança

Abstract

“Leadership”, a word, a theory and a practice that have served as the foundation for several studies in different areas (business administration, psychology, education) is also the base of this research. The Brazilian scientific studies about leadership have been a lot, but among all the information produced about the topic and registered at the IBICT (Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações do Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia), there were not found studies directed to the problem of the student leadership, one of the leadership approaches that had been analyzed and one of the fundamental topics of this research, since it has taken place at an university environment, and because students and specially university students today are considered the future of society. Therefore, meaning to approach the topic and considering the Social Representations Theory, this study analyzed the social representations that a group of business administration undergraduate students of two universities have about leadership. The students leadership has been taken into special consideration for this research as it is the closest and most real aspect of eadership in general at the university environment. This research has been done in accordance with a psychosocial perspective and tries to demonstrate how leadership representations affect the students. A qualitative and quantitative approach has been taken for this study which had an exploratory goal using as a research instrument a structured questionary in accordance with the free association method. This study showed that, in accordance with the central nucleus suggested, leadership for the students is defined by the University institution as well as the Academic Center for Students as their basic references. At first, teachers and individual characteristics of those who take leadership responsibilities are not taken into consideration. The data about political leadership has been analyzed showing the term “corruption” as part of the central nucleus of the representation, indicating a contamination or negative characteristics in the definition of leadership. The study also shows how several factors affect the leadership representation, revealing a cleardistinction in the definition process of the student representations of student leadership, political leadership and organizational leadership