Developing Professional Identity as a Mediator in relationship Transformational Leadership on Higher Education Innovation

The present research aimed to investigate the effect of the transformational leadership on higher education innovation with mediate of the professional identity development of faculty members of Sistan and Baluchestan University.

The research method was correlational which was performed on a sample of 166 faculty members in Sistan and Baluchestan University by stratified random sampling. The research instrument was three questionnaires of transformational leadership, higher education innovation and professional identity development. Confirmatory validity and composite reliability and Cronbach's alpha were reported as suitable instruments. The analysis method was performed with PLS2 software as a model of the structural equation.

The results showed that the Transformational leadership has directly and indirectly affected on higher education innovation and professional identity development. Professional identity development has directly and indirectly affected the process and product innovation of higher education. also, Process innovation was effective on product innovation.

It can be said that leadership and professional identity are Constructive in higher education innovation. In other words, soft skills are of particular importance to the adoption of process and product innovation. Keywords: transformational leadership, higher education innovation, professional identity development