Ethical Leadership, Organisational Justice and Nurses' Resilience: A Cross-Sectional Study in Iran.

AIM: To investigate the relationships among ethical leadership, organisational justice and nurses' resilience and to determine the extent to which these organisational resources are independently associated with nurses' resilience within the resource-outcome perspective of the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework.

BACKGROUND

Developing a resilient nursing workforce has become a strategic priority for healthcare organisations facing persistent nursing shortages, increasing clinical complexity and escalating job demands. Although ethical leadership and organisational justice have each been linked to positive workforce outcomes, their integrated contribution to nurses' resilience remains insufficiently understood, particularly within nursing management research and in resource-constrained healthcare systems.

METHODS

A cross-sectional correlational study was conducted among 226 registered nurses employed in teaching hospitals affiliated with Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Participants were recruited using proportional stratified random sampling. Data were collected using validated measures of ethical leadership, organisational justice and resilience. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and multiple linear regression analyses were performed using SPSS Version 27.

RESULTS

Ethical leadership demonstrated significant positive associations with organisational justice and nurses' resilience. Organisational justice was also positively associated with resilience and remained a significant independent associate after adjustment for demographic characteristics. Regression analyses indicated that ethical leadership and organisational justice jointly explained significant variance in key resilience dimensions, particularly personal competence, positive acceptance of change and perceived control. Among the organisational factors examined, leadership integrity and distributive justice showed the largest observed correlations with resilience.

CONCLUSIONS

This study extends the application of the JD-R model by demonstrating that ethical leadership and organisational justice function as complementary organisational resources that are positively associated with nurses' resilience. The findings suggest that individual resilience is associated with effective leadership, though it should not be conflated with organisational resilience.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Supporting workforce resilience requires organisational strategies that extend beyond individual resilience training. Nurse managers should prioritise ethical leadership development, transparent decision-making, equitable resource allocation and organisational justice to foster psychologically healthy work environments. Investing in these organisational resources may be associated with nurse well-being and warrants further interventional research to improve workforce retention and engagement, strengthen organisational performance and ultimately support the delivery of safe, high-quality and sustainable nursing care.