O desenvolvimento de competências de liderança em mundos virtuais tridimensionais: o caso do metaverso second life

Abstract

Managers´ leadership development has been targeted by them since their graduation. In this context, three dimensional (3D) Virtual Worlds, also known as metaverses, can be considered as an alternative that can contribute to this, because it has features that can allow users to live lifelike situations, which allows them to develop their competences in action (ZARIFIAN, 2001; LE BOTERF, 2003). In this sense, the research question that this dissertation aims to answer is: "How metaverses might be used as an environment for the development of leadership skills in business administration higher education?” The researcher followed some propositions that were possible answers to this question, such as the use of metaverses positively contributes to the development of leadership competency by enabling the simulation of real work situations, considering experiences that would not be possible to be lived in other contexts neither face to face nor virtually, and by enabling a virtual environment with rich resources for interaction between leaders and their followers. This research was developed in the Business Administration Graduation course named Management for Innovation and Leadership at Universidade do Vale dos Sinos (UNISINOS). The method used in this study was the Design Research that aimed to design an educational method for leadership development inside the metaverse Second Life. Initially, the following topics were studied in the literature: competency, leadership and metaverses. After this, we performed virtual meetings during the application of the Design Research method. After finishing research activicties, the research question can be answered by observing the affordances of the metaverse that provides interaction, communication, collaboration, among other perceptions by students. These affordances help to promote the development of leadership attributes, such as: decision-making, resilience, among others. Finally, the main contributions of this research was a deeper theoretical study of the issues of competency, leadership and metaverses, and the leadership educational method developed during this study that might be replicated and/or improved by other researchers or practioners.