AI-Empowered Leadership and Sustainable Development: An Empirical Model of Ethical Governance and SDG Performance

Rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into organizational processes offers substantial potential for enhancing performance and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, current leadership models often lack mechanisms to ensure ethical governance, transparency, and accountability in AI adoption. Challenges such as hidden biases, limited oversight, and insufficient alignment with sustainability objectives restrict organizations’ ability to leverage AI responsibly, highlighting the need for empirically validated frameworks that combine AI-driven decision-making with ethical and sustainable practices. This research proposes an AI-empowered leadership model integrating AI-empowered leadership (AI-EL), ethical governance (EG), leadership commitment to sustainability (LCS), stakeholder collaboration (SC), and organizational culture (OC) to improve SDG performance. Data were collected from 210 managers and executives across diverse sectors using a structured questionnaire with Likert-scale ratings. Structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted using Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) software to examine direct and indirect relationships while ensuring measurement reliability and validity. SEM results confirmed all hypotheses were AI-EL ( = 0.65,  = 0.42) and other predictors demonstrated medium-to-large effect sizes (= 0.23–0.35), indicating statistically significant and robust relationships. These findings provide actionable insights for organizations to integrate AI into leadership, enhance predictive decision-making, and achieve measurable sustainability outcomes across sectors.