Managerial skill of the higher education institution heads

The current management evolution trends are characterized by the fact that it encompasses all areas of economic, social, educational, political life, allowing a better understanding of market problems, under the conditions of defining a large number of interconnections and restrictions. In a high-performance management, the ability to identify transformations and to report needs is affirmed, promoting professional competition, optimally manage resources, communicate effectively, develop innovative management strategies. For these reasons, today's constantly changing society, progress in various fields requires decision-makers to consolidate a modern way of thinking, to actively promote the abandonment of outdated leadership and organization mentalities and methods, in order to emphasize the training and management of human resources, to capitalize and stimulate the individual personality qualities of heads in educational institutions, including those of higher education, in the perspective of training managerial skills. Likewise, we mention the fact that the current higher education system has been facing various problems in recent decades, including: the sudden drop in the number of students; decreasing access to quality education; low results in national and international tests; high level of dropping out of university studies, showing a low level of motivation for learning. This set of problems is deduced from the study "Comprehensive evaluation of the educational sector in the Republic of Moldova", but also from the analysis of various reports, based on studies the student, as a subject of education. The persistence of the bureaucratic management model, rooted in the culture of higher education institutions and not only, the value system of teaching and managerial staff incongruent with the value system promoted in educational policy documents, but also the inconsistency of the distribution of managerial functions vertically and horizontally, represent factors that determine the decrease in motivation for a career in the field of education. Only in an educational institution, managers are the ones who promote the change, they feel that they should first know the conditions that determine the change and understand the attitudes and motivations that produce it. So, the role of change agent highlights the manager's concern for improvement and adaptation to the changes imposed by the environment. Exercising this role requires the manager to identify and exploit opportunities, but also to develop the ability to initiate changes to direct the institution towards the defined goals [115, pp.36-37]. In these described realities, the process of developing managerial skills in the leaders of higher education institutions becomes an essential desire to ensure effective and successful leadership, to respond to educational needs and challenges. Thus, we deduce the actuality and importance of researching the particularities of the managerial skill development among the educational institution heads, a spectrum that involves: a) double professionalization of the educational institution heads, reflected in the knowledge and qualities that emphasize professional skill, on the one hand, and the skill to lead managerially, on the other; b) the ability to develop an efficient system of relations in the institutional environment, aimed both at relations with subordinates and relations between subordinates, in order to establish a work climate favourable to performance; c) modeling a proper managerial behaviour, which positively influences the actions of subordinates, orienting them towards effective activities to obtain concrete results, corresponding to the established objectives; d) the authority with which is invested is on the one hand formal, specific to the position held by the manager in the institution; e) managerial creativity is necessary at a higher, innovative level to successfully face the demands generated by technical, technological, social changes, etc. f) the power of managerial resistance to requests is typical of the managers' activity, in particular, who are subject to decisional stress, time pressure, responsibility in the conditions of an open and sometimes/often contradictory pedagogical context; h) increased sense of managerial responsibility realized and continuously perfected by the manager as a superior attitude, internalized at the motivational, affective and character level, giving a superior social status in front of subordinates and superiors. The system of educational management must be oriented towards flexibility, diversity, generation, development and implementation of new ideas. Emerging from these ideas, we mention the fact that the dynamism of contemporary life, determined by the impressive changes in all spheres of activity, requires a continuous adaptation of the higher education system to the new orientations and realities. The orientation towards democracy and openness can ensure the success of the Republic of Moldova only if education forms personalities capable of capitalizing on new ideas, values, models of thinking, promote new individual behaviours, characteristic of a democratic society. But, the theoretical and empirical approaches differ at the level of particularities through which the success or efficiency of an educational institution is operationalized. In recent years, the importance of organizational factors for the quality of education has been highlighted, beyond strictly educational or didactic indicators. Therefore, the managerial staff in higher education institutions will orient the entire management activity of the institutions in the directions drawn by the mission of education and the educational ideal, by capitalizing on managerial skills and experience in the field, being accompanied by the ability to take initiative, to correctly approach problems, the ability to use one's own strengths and relationships and to assume potential risks. So, educational services represents a set of specialized activities, carried out through specific methods and techniques, developed and carried out within public institutions or organizations, belonging to a community, which aims to solve various categories of problems regarding the education and instruction of various categories of beneficiaries from the respective community. For these reasons, the development of the managerial skills of management staff from higher education institutions requires self-reflection, self-direction, self-appreciation and behavioral reconstruction, through self-assumption of changes, through professional awareness and responsibility. However, this requires the provision of continuous renewal and restructuring of one's own purchasing device, flexibility and responsiveness in relation to the circumstances that emerge along the way. From the problem described above, we deduce that the quality of educational services is determined by a multitude of factors, including the managerial skills of the educational institution heads, which requires the employment within the managerial system of competent, competitive, creative managerial staff with managerial performance, intrinsically motivated for quality managerial activity, for continuous development, with a pro-active attitude towards change. However, managerial staff is based on a certain amount of previously acquired knowledge, which will be used in different combinations, associations; correlations. The ability to solve problems depends, to a large extent, on the quality and richness of its cognitive repertoire, being subjected to restructuring and transformation, in order to obtain the desired solution.