The transition toward Industry 5.0 emphasizes human-centric leadership in technologically advanced socio-technical sectors, such as maritime transport and education. While digitalization and automation are rapidly transforming maritime operations, there remains a lack of empirically grounded frameworks that integrate emotional, social, intercultural, and digital capacities into a coherent model of leadership readiness aligned with Industry 5.0 principles. This study aims to develop and pilot-test the Human-Centric Leadership Readiness for Industry 5.0 (HCLR-I5) instrument and to examine key human and digital predictors of leadership readiness in maritime education and industry contexts. A cross-sectional survey design was employed using a parallel sample drawn from two maritime hubs - NVNA, Bulgaria and UPC, Barcelona - comprising maritime trainees, educators, and industry experts. Human-Centric Leadership Readiness (HCLR) was operationalized as a theoretically grounded composite index. At the same time, Emotional Self-Regulation (ESR), Social Attunement and Strength-Based Leadership (SA-SBL), Intercultural Communication Effectiveness (ICE), and AI/Digital Self-Efficacy (AI-SE) were treated as reflective predictor scales. Pearson correlation analysis and multiple regression were applied to examine relationships among the constructs. The results indicate that HCLR is positively associated with ESR, SA-SBL, and ICE, with social attunement and strength-based leadership emerging as the strongest predictor. In contrast, AI/Digital Self-Efficacy demonstrated a negative standardized association with HCLR, suggesting a potential tension between technological confidence and human-centric leadership orientations in early Industry 5.0 maritime contexts. This study contributes a pilot-validated instrument and proposes a layered, human-centric conceptual framework for leadership readiness in Industry 5.0 maritime environments. The findings highlight the central role of relational, emotional, and intercultural capacities in leadership development and underscore the importance of embedding digital competencies within ethically and socially grounded leadership frameworks.
Kalinov et al. (Mon,) studied this question.