Optimizing leadership selection for inclusive climate: A Sierpinski-Triangle fuzzy decision support approach

Establishing an inclusive climate in organizations has become a strategic priority for increasing employee engagement, effectively managing diversity, and achieving sustainable organizational success. Much of the existing research either focuses on a single leadership type or fails to consider the relationship between leadership and inclusive climate with a holistic approach. The aim of this study is to identify the most appropriate leadership types for establishing an inclusive climate. To this end, a new and holistic multi-criteria decision-making model, the Sierpinski Triangle fuzzy sets (STFSs), is integrated into the model, enabling a more flexible and robust modeling of uncertainties. The assessment relied on the judgments of five experts drawn from academia and industry in Türkiye, representing diverse disciplinary and sectoral backgrounds. The model's robustness was verified through sensitivity analysis, which confirmed the stability of rankings across multiple weighting scenarios. The findings reveal that the most important criteria for establishing an inclusive climate are psychological safety (.184) and ethical organizational climate (.158). Furthermore, the most suitable leadership types are determined to be ethical leadership (.948) and responsible leadership (.942).