Exploring the Role of Leadership Styles in Innovation Teams: A Case Study of King Abdullah Medical City Makkah, Saudi Arabia

Innovation teams have received increasing interest from academia and practice. However, little is known about how the performance of innovation teams is fostered. We investigate the role of leadership styles (i.e., autocratic, participative, and laissez-faire) in promoting the team performance during each stages of team growth (i.e., forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning). A qualitative approach with different data collection techniques has been used in this study. The data were collected from four (4) focused groups, eight face-to-face interviews and unstructured researcher's non-participatory observation and it was generated from King Abdullah Medical City (KAMC), a healthcare organization located in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, in March 2019. The findings demonstrate that the participative style is the most influential. In contrast, autocratic and laissez-faire styles have fallen short to keep the members move forward to the final stages of the project.have been