Leadership and innovation: relations between leadership, individual characteristics and the functioning of R&D teams

The main focus of this paper is the functioning of R&D teams, the role of t he team leader and the characteristics of individual team members. After a brief overview of recent literature on leadership and innovation, some rese arch results are presented from a study of leadership in self-managing team s; these teams have a number of characteristics in common with R&D teams, s uch as dependent tasks and job autonomy. The results lead to an integrated model for the effective functioning of R&D teams, with a focus on the relat ions between leadership behaviour, individual characteristics, team functio ning and outcome variables.