Resumo: Organizational innovation has been associated with modernity, competitiveness and productivity. Common sense sees an enterprise that doesn’t innovate as condemned to die in a short term. As we see it, innovation is a social process in which the leader has a special role to play. Our purpose is to identify innovative leaders’ behaviours as perceived by their collaborators. We are aware of the fact that people don’t act the way they refer to in their conversations – “theories in use differ from espoused theories” (Argyris, 1999), therefore, trying to overcome the risk of assessing data biased by espoused theories, and build a questionnaire that could reach the theories in use, we chose Kelly’s repertory grid methodology.In this paper we shall present Kelly’s methodology and the results of an exploratory survey, from which we may conclude that the social and interactive elements are central to subordinates’ perception of innovative leaders’ behaviours, in the tourism sector of the Algarve.
