explaining behavior of female managers in higher education, case study: al-zahra university

the aim of this study is to discover the female leadership behavior at the al-zahra university of iran. this university is an example of higher education in which women have long been (more than half a century) responsible for management and leadership. in this study, in order to know the leadership behavior of women, the elements of transformational and transactional leadership styles have been used. the four elements that underlie transformational leadership style are idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration. transactional leadership consists of four elements including contingent reward, management by exception (active) and management by exception (passive) and laissez - faire. this research was conducted using qualitative methods. the data in this paper were collected using triangulation method such as interviews with managers, staff and observation. statistical population and sample include the president of the university and female heads of departments, student research assistants together with one or two of heads of their offices working in their management field, which were 19 people in total. in this study, content analysis method was used in order to process the data. the results of this study showed that female managers in al-zahra university tended toward the transformational leadership style. among the reasons for the managers' tendency to the transformational leadership style in addition to their gender, the experience factor and their awareness of the university can be referred. furthermore, the managers who had a long-term experience in the higher education, tend more towards the elements of transformational leadership style.