Leadership strategies to foster innovation in healthcare organizations of the UK: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: UK healthcare organizations face increasing pressure to innovate in response to technological advancements, resource constraints, and evolving patient expectations. Leadership plays a crucial role in driving such innovation by influencing organizational culture, employee engagement, and the adoption of new practices. OBJECTIVES: The main objective of this systematic review was to assess the most effective leadership strategies for fostering innovation within the UK healthcare sector. METHODOLOGY: A systematic search was conducted using databases such as Scopus, EBSCO, PubMed, and Google Scholar, with search terms focused on leadership, innovation, and healthcare. The PICO framework guided study selection, and inclusion criteria limited studies to those published between 2015 and 2024 in English and within the UK context. Ten studies met the criteria and were critically appraised using the CASP checklist. RESULTS: This review found that transformational leadership was the most effective strategy for promoting innovation, followed by servant and transactional leadership. Transformational leadership enabled vision-sharing, employee empowerment, and cultural change, while servant leadership fostered autonomy and motivation. Transactional leadership supported operational efficiency and accountability. Organizational culture emerged as a key mediating factor, and leadership theories such as Contingency Theory and the Great Man Theory provided additional explanatory value. CONCLUSION: The review concludes that transformational leadership is best suited for encouraging innovation in UK healthcare, and recommends expanding future research to include larger sample sizes and cross-country comparisons to enhance generalizability.