Professor Laura Costanzo

Research groups

Research interests

• Entrepreneurship and strategic behaviour of family businesses and SMEs
• Sustainable entrepreneurship
• Social entrepreneurship
• Management teams’ strategic dynamics
• Uncertainty and intuition in entrepreneurial decision-making

Current research

Professor Costanzo is a qualitative researcher. Her research interests include entrepreneurship and strategic behaviour of family businesses and SMEs, sustainable entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, management teams’ strategic dynamics, uncertainty and intuition in entrepreneurial decision-making. These subjects are researched within different industry contexts in both developed and developing economies by applying different theoretical lenses of investigation, which so far have mainly included institutional theory, institutional logics, ambidexterity, paradox, strategy-as-practice perspectives, imprinting theory, affect-as-information theory, appraisal tendency framework, narratives.

Professor Costanzo has successfully supervised to completion 13 doctoral theses. She welcomes PhD applications on topics concerning sustainable entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, intuition and business venturing, strategic decision making and entrepreneurial behaviour of SMEs and family businesses.

Particularly, with regard to family businesses she is interested in understanding how these innovate and ensure a smooth transgenerational change, their environmental, social and economic sustainability, female leadership in family businesses, the interface between the family and business entities and how such interface influences the trajectory of the family business development, the impact of family conflicts on decision-making, the influence of the macro culture and family identity in embracing innovation versus tradition, the role of the family founder’s intuition in business opportunity’s exploitation.

She also welcomes applications on new topics to address contemporary social, business and managerial issues. Some of the latter include individual and collective well-being, business preparedness to dealing with crises, shaping the post-pandemic entrepreneurial ecosystem, individual freedom and survival. Professor Costanzo is keen in developing new theoretical paradigms and empirical approaches to research these new topics with the ultimate aim to make a contribution not only to the scholarship of strategy, entrepreneurship and management studies, but also to effectively impact on society.     

Professor Costanzo’s research in the subject areas of strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship has been published in top ABS 3* and 4* including the British Journal of Management, European Management Review, Journal of Small Business Management, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. Her research work presented at international conferences has received international awards including the EURAM/SIMA best paper award for SMEs/International Management, BAM Strategic Foresight SIG, Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence for Outstanding Paper in JFRC, and a nomination for top 10 Strategic Management Society/McKinsey Best Papers (USA). She has been chairing conference tracks at international conferences (European Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society) and she has been an invited keynote speaker at international conferences on sustainability issues with a focus on entrepreneurial strategic processes.