Leadership Practices and Innovation-Related Outcomes in Higher Education Institutions: An Audit-Ready Meta-Analysis

Higher education institutions (HEIs) increasingly depend on innovation to navigate digital transformation, resource constraints, and rising performance accountability. Although leadership is widely viewed as a managerial lever for enabling innovation, empirical evidence in HEIs remains fragmented across overlapping leadership labels and unevenly defined innovation outcomes. This study synthesises quantitative evidence on the association between leadership practices and innovation-related outcomes in HEIs using a random-effects meta-analysis. A multi-database search of Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest, CNKI, and Google Scholar identified 16 independent studies that met pre-defined inclusion and auditability criteria, retaining only extractable zero-order correlations with verifiable sample sizes. Leadership constructs were consolidated into three mechanism-based practice families (change/energising/developmental; enabling/condition-building; strategic orchestration/ambidexterity), and innovation outcomes were organised using a tiered framework spanning behavioural/process enactment and innovation performance/output. Effect sizes were synthesised on Fisher’s z and back-transformed to r for interpretation. The pooled association between leadership practices and innovation-related outcomes was positive (r ≈ 0.52, 95% CI ≈ 0.43–0.59), indicating that stronger leadership practice exposure is linked to higher innovation outcomes in HEIs. Heterogeneity was substantial (I² > 90%), suggesting meaningful contextual variation across institutional settings and study designs. Subgroup analyses across leadership families, outcome tiers, and an institutional configuration proxy (China vs non China) were directionally consistent but did not provide decisive contrast evidence under modest subgroup sizes. Findings provide an evidence-based correlational benchmark for education leadership research and support practical governance guidance for university leaders seeking to strengthen innovation conditions.