The Organizational Benefits of Neurodiversity: A Strategic Human Capital–Based Systematic Review and Research Agenda

ABSTRACT

There is growing interest in neurodiversity across multiple research domains, including human resource management (HRM). Within HRM research, discussions of neurodiversity have increasingly extended beyond inclusion as an ethical concern to raise questions about potential organizational benefits. However, there is limited clarity regarding how such benefits have been examined within the HRM literature. This paper addresses this issue through a strategic human capital–informed systematic review of 88 studies on HRM and neurodiversity. Our findings show that existing research provides a growing body of insights into potential organizational benefits. However, empirical evidence at the organizational level remains limited and uneven. Building on these findings, we propose a future research agenda focused on the organizational value of human capital associated with neurodivergence and the processes through which such value emerges, highlighting the need for more quantitative studies assessing organizational‐level outcomes and qualitative research unpacking emergence processes. We further develop an extended emergence perspective by showing how the recognition, creation, and realization of value shape the transformation of neurodivergent individual capacities into organizational‐level human capital resources. In doing so, the paper contributes to strategic human capital theory by offering a structured framework for understanding emergence processes, while highlighting neurodiversity as a particularly informative context for examining the conditions under which they occur.