Ethical Decision-making Model for Educators: Insights from Imam Sajjad’s Supplications

Ethical performance is essential for educational leaders, but the process of ethical decision-making in different contexts is not well understood. Islamic countries, with a distinctive philosophy, require their own theories of ethics.

The aim of this study was to explain a model of ethical decision-making based on the teachings of Sahifa Sajjadiyeh, a collection of supplications and moral guidance by Imam Sajjad, the fourth Shia Imam.

This study used conventional content analysis to examine the text of Sahifa Sajjadiyeh and extract all the concepts related to the ethics of managers. To ensure the accuracy of the interpretation, the researchers consulted various commentaries on the text, such as Riyad al-Salkin (in Arabic) and several Persian explanations. The validity and reliability of the results were also verified by the consensus of researchers and external audit.

The model derived from this study has three main categories that every manager should consider in every decision: necessities, facilitating factors, and inhibiting factors of ethical decision-making. Each category has subcategories that are interrelated.

According to the findings of this study, the central variable of this model is faith in God's absolute sovereignty as the basis for ethical decision-making. The influencing factors that can range from inhibition to facilitation include the individual characteristics of the manager, organizational atmosphere, and community culture. These concepts can be used to design decision-making evaluation questionnaires for managers.