Leadership, Diversity, and Dignity at Work: A Meta-Analytic Review Across Culturally and Professionally Diverse Organizations

This meta-analytic study synthesizes empirical evidence published between 2000 and 2025 to examine how leadership behaviors shape dignity at work within culturally and professionally diversified organizational contexts. Drawing on 112 independent samples (N = 47,236) from 92 peer-reviewed studies, employing random-effects meta-analysis, subgroup analysis, and Meta-analytic Structural Equation Modeling (MASEM) to assess (a) the magnitude of the leadership–dignity relationship, (b) the mediating role of dignity in leadership–outcome linkages, and (c) the moderating effects of cultural orientation, professional diversity, and sectoral context. Results indicate moderate-to-strong positive association between leadership behaviors and employee dignity. MASEM findings further establish dignity as a significant mediating mechanism linking leadership to engagement and innovation. Dignity partially mediates the link between leadership and key organizational outcomes, exerting a significant indirect effect on engagement and innovation. Moderator analyses show that these effects are stronger in culturally and professionally heterogeneous environments and in hybrid institutional settings compared with homogeneous corporate contexts. These results underscore the heightened importance of dignity in work systems characterized by inter-professional collaboration, technical specialization, and diverse value orientations. The study advances a Dignity-Centered Leadership Model that integrates leadership theory, diversity scholarship, and dignity frameworks to explain how leaders cultivate constructive relational climates within pluralistic institutional ecosystems. The findings offer theoretically grounded and managerial insights for leading pluralistic, knowledge-intensive, and public-sector organizations.