Development and validation of a comprehensive scale of sustainable ethical leadership in Iran's higher education system

Higher education leaders play an important role in promoting ethics and sustainable development in society, so they are expected to engage in "sustainable ethical leadership". Ethical leadership and sustainable leadership are intertwined concepts that are necessary to achieve success and sustainability. The purpose of the current research was to develop and validate a scale to measure "sustainable ethical leadership" in Iran's higher education system. For this purpose, the theoretical foundations and literature of internal and external researches in the field of ethical leadership and sustainable leadership were examined with a six-step approach of systematic review of the background, and based on that, the competencies, functions and consequences of "sustainable ethical leadership" was extracted and a tool was designed. In the next stage, this tool was implemented among 334 faculty members of Shiraz University and University of Technology who were selected by stratified random sampling method. The content validity of the tool structure was measured using item analysis and first- and second-order confirmatory factor analysis, and its reliability was measured using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Validation results showed that the "Sustainable Ethical Leadership" scale had a suitable fit. In the variable of "sustainable ethical leadership", competences, functions and consequences with a factor load (0.94), (0.98) and (0.95) were significant explanations of this variable and their validity was confirmed. Other results indicated the validity and reliability of this scale. The sustainable ethical leadership scale can be a valid tool to evaluate the degree of orientation of university managers to ethical dimensions and sustainable development at the same time.