SUSTAINABILITY-ORIENTED LEADERSHIP AND ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

While there is growing awareness of the central role higher education institutions are playing in global sustainability, the nature of leadership practices that support the implementation of commitments into the day-to-day institutional decision-making is still not fully understood. This study analyzed the mediating effect of organizational ethical climate between the sustainability-oriented leadership and sustainability-oriented institutional practices and ethical decision making in public-sector universities. Sustainability-oriented leadership was defined within the framework of Responsible Leadership Theory as a relational, stakeholder-involved leadership style which goes beyond the traditional scope of responsibilities of an organization to the realm of ethics. This was a parallel mixed methods design, involving a quantitative survey of 350 faculty members from public universities, and semi-structured interviews with 18 heads of department. The results of the structural equation modelling revealed that the sustainability-oriented leadership had significant influence on ethical decision-making (β = .48) and organizational ethical climate (β = .67); organizational ethical climate had significant influence on institutional sustainability (β = .54). The relationship between sustainability-oriented leadership and institutional sustainability was fully mediated by ethical climate in bootstrapped mediation analysis (indirect effect β = .36, 95% CI [.27, .46]) but there was also a significant direct effect (β = .29). The model accounted for 61% of the variance in institutional sustainability. These findings were supported by a thematic analysis of the interview data, which revealed that stakeholder-inclusive leadership, ethical climate and transparency, and structural/resources barriers are significant conditions recurring throughout implementation. The results show that the sustainability orientation of the leaders is not enough to ensure sustainability governance in higher education, it also relies on the ethical climate in which the decisions are made. The study advances the theory of university governance by better explaining this mediating mechanism and provides practical implications for improving sustainability governance and faculty participation.