Ph. D. (Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / Universities of Technology are an essential institutional type in South African higher education. However, their performance often lags behind that of traditional and comprehensive universities, which inspires the need to use research to seek ways of improving them. This study focuses on the interconnection between transformational and transactional leadership, organisational innovation and performance in South African universities of technology. Performance was measured based on the balanced scorecard perspective. The study followed a quantitative method, using the views of 387 academic and non-academic professional respondents drawn from three South African universities of technology. Hypotheses were tested using correlations and regression analysis. The study identified three transformational leadership factors, namely idealised influence, intellectual stimulation and inspirational leadership that are relevant to the tested relationship. Six performance dimensions, namely internal growth, financial performance, internal processes, customer satisfaction, learning, and grants and income were also identified and used to measure performance. The three transformational leadership factors, idealised influence, intellectual stimulation and inspirational leadership all correlated with and predicted innovation. In turn, innovation correlated with and predicted the six performance factors (internal growth, financial performance, internal processes, customer satisfaction, learning, and grants and income). The study indicates that the transformational leadership style has a direct positive effect on institutional innovation in universities of technology. Furthermore, innovation is an important driver of performance. Therefore, universities of technology that place an emphasis on transformational leadership and innovation are likely to register superior performance.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-03T18:32:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alexandre_Silva_Rodrigues.pdf: 730519 bytes, checksum: 352a48ab1ef42b5b49d1e7a959719bda (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-05-04 / This research focus in identifying and analysing the main factors that determine the difficulties in the learning process related process related to mathematical disciplines present in the business graduation programs 20 managers of different areas were interviewed and disclosed "what" is really important of mathematics for the administrator, and their answers based the construction of a questionnaire that, applied to 271 students of two privates education institutions in Sao Paulo, measured the agreement level for each one of the 26 questions. Results (data) were statistically analyzed using multivariate data techniques, specially factor analysis with a computacional tool, SPSS.The results showed six main factors that were named as follow: teaching process unconnected with reality generating monotony, didatics, exclusion by natural aptitude, level of effort needed, class methodology and enviroment. Each factor was analysed according to existent theorical approaches, clarifying that teaching process unconneted with reality is generated by an obsolete class methodology, found in the bulge of an inadequate didatics, as well the students effort in such disciplines is related to their natural aptitude didatics, as well the students effort in such disciplines is related to their natural aptitude to work with them. The enviroment, pointed as an important component for the learning process, is the scenary where all the mentioned factors are lived by the business programs actors. All the factors detected were confirmed as part of the three worse identified problems in the mathematical teach-learning process: teaching imperfections, cognitive disfunctions and enviroment. At the end, some suggestions were made in order to brighten up the mentioned problems. / O tema central desta pesquisa ?? a identifica????o e an??lise dos principais fatores que geram dificuldades de aprendizagem de disciplinas matem??ticas em alunos dos cursos de Administra????o de Empresas. Um grupo de 20 gestores das mais diversas ??reas revelou atrav??s de entrevistas estruturadas "o qu??" ?? importante de matem??tica para o administrador, sendo que suas respostas constitu??ram um importante subs??dio para a constru????o de um instrumento de pesquisa que, aplicado a 271 alunos de duas institui????es de ensino particular de S??o Paulo, apurou para 26 assertivas o grau de concord??ncia quanto ?? raz??o apresentada para as dificuldades aqui pesquisadas. Os dados foram submetidos a testes estat??sticos a analisados segundo o m??todo multivariado de an??lise fatorial, com o aux??lio da ferramenta computacional SPSS??. Seis fatores foram definidos, identificados como ensino "descontextualizado" gerando monotonia, did??tica, exclus??o por aptid??o natural, esfor??o, metodologia de aula e ambiente. Cada um dos fatores foi analisado segundo as teorias existentes trazendo a percep????o de que o ensino "descontextualizado" ?? gerado por uma metodologia de aula obsoleta, que por sua vez encontra-se no bojo de uma did??tica inedequada, assim como o esfor??o dispendido pelos alunos em tais mat??rias ?? decorrente da aptid??o natural dos mesmos em rela????o a tais assuntos. O ambiente, tamb??m apontado como determinante no processo de aprendizagem, ?? o palco sobre o qual os demais fatores s??o vivenciados pelos atores do curso de gest??o empresarial. A gama de fatores relevantes aqui detectada p??de ser confirmada como parte integrante dos tr??s principais focos geradores de problemas no ensino-aprendizagem de matem??tica, identificados pela academia como: falhas docentes, falhas cognitivas e problemas ambientais. Ao t??rmino, sugest??es relevantes s??o tecidas objetivando amenizar os problemas mencionados.