Public sector organizations face growing pressure to innovate rapidly while maintaining service quality, accountability, and public trust. In the UAE, national transformation agendas strongly emphasize agility and innovation, yet organizational routines and hierarchical cultures often constrain their diffusion. This literature review addresses the gap between strategic intent and routine innovation capability by examining agile leadership as a key enabling mechanism. Drawing on international and the UAE-focused studies, the review synthesizes evidence on how agile leadership influences public sector innovation capability through knowledge-sharing processes and organizational learning. Specifically, it reviews literature on tacit and explicit knowledge sharing as mediators shaping the innovation speed–quality dynamic, and absorptive capacity as a moderating capability explaining variation in outcomes across entities. Findings suggest that agile leadership can enhance innovation speed and quality when supported by effective knowledge-sharing routines and strong absorptive capacity. However, empirical UAE-specific evidence remains limited. Future research should test integrated, multi-level frameworks across public organizations to strengthen generalizability and inform capability-based public sector transformation.
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