PurposeThe purpose of this study is to discover the components of virtual leadership in universities and higher education institutions during Covid-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThis research uses the qualitative research design, and semi-structured interviews with senior leaders were conducted with non-random purposeful and snowball sampling methods. Also, grounded theory was used for analyzing, coding and classifying the data.FindingsAfter analyzing data, five main components influencing virtual leadership including leader's personality traits, followers' characteristics, technological, environmental and organizational components were identified.Research limitations/implicationsAs leadership, particularly virtual leadership, highly depends on context such as the level of technology in that certain region, the results cannot be generalized to other sectors or countries.Originality/valueThe research advances leadership development theory by highlighting the main components of virtual leadership in educational sector as a comprehensive perspective and complement the other aspects of virtual leadership such as consequences and challenges investigated by other studies.

The increasing application of performance excellence and evaluation models causes organizations to use these models in assessment of their own performance and success (Tehran Jahad-E-Daneshgahi, 2002). Today, several models have been highly proposed to evaluate the performance. Some models like balanced scorecard have been widely developed (Akbari, 2007). In the present study, Kanji's business excellence measurement system (KBEMS) has been used to assess the performance of Bandar Abbas Electric Power Distribution Company. In addition to focusing on organizational excellence, this model measures the performance with respect to two approaches on performance measurement from the perspective of inner and out stakeholders of the organization. Since the given performance measurement model has been constituted of two sections of performance evaluation from the viewpoint of inner and out stakeholders of the organization, in order to achieve the above mentioned objective, one should examine two minor goals which are based on performance in view of these stakeholders. Consequently, there were two different statistical populations in this study, which led to conducting test on the hypotheses about them. In this research, a questionnaire as means of collecting information, as well as SPSS and S-Plus software have been used for statistical analysis. Eventually, the final score was achieved and analyzed for organizational performance.

Given the importance of strategic agility in banks, the purpose of research is to evaluate the designed strategic agility model by the researcher in BankMelli. The model, which is the result of Meta-Synthesis and Delphi-method, consists of 4 main dimensions, 11 components and 34 indicators. The statistical population includes the official employees of Bank Melli with specialized jobs working in the offices units in Tehran (946 people). The sample size was determined based on Cochran's formula (275 people) and sampling was done randomly. The data collection method was the use of a researcher-made questionnaire based on the extracted model, which Its validity and reliability was confirmed using content validation and Cronbach's alpha. Testing the model in BankMelli, using statistical tests such as confirmatory factor analysis (second order) using Chi-square test and examining the fitness of RMSEA, P-value, χ2/df indicators as well as T-test were performed and the model was evaluated.