Leadership and Innovation in Islamic Higher Education: A Systematic Literature Review for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Islamic higher education stands to be transformed by the leadership and innovation that is based on the Islamic ethical principles to bring about long term sustainability of the institution. The proposed study is a synthesizing research on the topic of leadership practices, innovation strategies, and sustainability initiatives in Islamic higher education published in 2021-2025 in the form of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). With the guidance of PRISMA 2020, 19 peer-reviewed articles were chosen in the form of ScienceDirect, ERIC, Sage journals, SpringerLink, and Wiley online library. The thematic synthesis was employed in analysing data. There are three significant and related themes in the findings. To begin with, Islamic higher education leadership has value-based, managerial, and capacity building orientations. The leaders do not only maintain institutional mission and Islamic identity but also catalyze digital transformation, governance reform and human capital development. Second, pedagogical and digital practices, such as course design with LMS support, problem-based learning, and technology-enhanced instruction, are the most prominent in the sphere of innovation and which have been shown to both increase student engagement and student learning outcomes. Other innovations are in the field of curriculum reform, branding, and financial management, which are some of the institutional attempts to adapt to changing demands. Third, institutional resilience, culture of quality, human development, and general societal contributions are linked to sustainability, which is a less discussed concept. The concept of sustainability is commonly presented as the desired consequence of leadership-based reforms and innovation-based modernization yet operational indicators have not been developed yet. In general, the review indicates that the intervention of alignment between leadership and innovation is the core of the quality improvement and sustainable development of the Islamic higher education. Digital adoption and reforms can be facilitated by leadership commitment and long-term institutional strength is achieved through innovations introduced at both instructional and organisational levels.