Diversity Management, Innovation-work Behaviour and Employee Engagement in Agricultural SMEs in Ibadan, Nigeria

Grounded on dynamic capability and job demands resources perspectives, this studyinvestigates whether diversity management amplifies the effect of innovation-work behaviouron employee engagement among 347 agricultural SMEs in Ibadan, Nigeria. A convergentmixed-methods design combined survey data (PLS-SEM, 5,000 bias-corrected bootstraps,instrumental-variable distance-to-node controls) with 25 semi-structured interviews.Descriptive diagnostics indicate high reliability (α ≥ 0.88, AVE ≥ 0.66, VIF < 3.3). Quantitativeresults show that innovation-work behaviour positively predicts employee engagement (β =0.44, p < 0.001); diversity management significantly moderates this relationship (β = 0.23, p <0.001), with the slope 46 % steeper under high diversity management. Moderated-mediationanalyses reveal that psychological safety and inclusive leadership sequentially transmit theinteractive effect (conditional indirect effect = 0.19 [0.12, 0.27] at high diversity management;non-significant at low). Qualitative themes corroborate the quantitative findings, highlightinglanguage-inclusive ideation and anonymous suggestion portals as micro-processes.Implications for inclusive agro-policy and SME cluster development are discussed.