Análisis exploratorio de las percepciones sobre los estilos de liderazgo de los directivos universitarios en el norte de Chile

In a context of changes and challenges that higher education institutions nowadays must face, this research aims to explore the relationship between the perception about leadership style that professors have about their academic unit's directors, and the quality achieved by it. This is necessary because leadership is configured as one of the key elements for the academic organizations performance. For this purpose, a Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire was applied to 55 professors from 22 academic units from 6 universities in northern Chile. The data was processed through a Bivariate Correlation Analysis and Stepwise Multiple Linear Regression. At multivariate level the transformational leadership showed the greater positive and significant correlation (R = 0.679, p <0.001) with the quality of academic units. It is concluded that transformational leadership is the style that has the larger impact on the quality of academic units.