1 The role of religious common good traditions in fostering humanistic leadership George Gotsis and Aikaterini Grimani Keywords: humanistic leadership, humane workplaces, human dignity, common good, Catholic social thought Abstract Humanistic leadership is an emerging construct in leadership development invested with a strong potential to promote more humane, compassionate and values-based organizations. Not infrequently rooted in philosophical reasoning, virtue ethics in particular, humanistic leadership is intertwined with religious connotations. The present study is intended to provide a tentative framework of assessing the role of Roman Catholic common good traditions in informing leadership practices centered on moral awareness, intrinsic worthiness and respect of all stakeholders. In sum, we discuss and review certain religious views of leadership that share a vision toward a socially responsible and sustainable business environment. Introduction The adjective ‘humanistic’ in humanistic management and leadership theories derives from the philosophical concept of Humanism. Extant literature on humanism examines this concept under two principal aspects: in a wider sense humanism is primarily viewed as a kind of Weltauffassung, of a comprehensive worldview that places an emphasis on the dignity and intrinsic worthiness of human beings in the pursuit of the common good. Humanism in a wider sense has been subject to a variety of interpretations that may even embrace religious connotations and transcendent values. As Loza Adaui and Habisch (2013) meticulously noticed, humanism is a multifaceted construct that encompasses diverse approaches ranging from Protagoras’ definition of man as the measure of all things, to the multiple post-humanistic theories elaborated in the late 20th century and culminating in the French anti-humanistic structuralism of prominent intellectuals such as Michel Foucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan and Louis Althusser.