About
Professor Laura Costanzo is the Head of Southampton Business School and Professor of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Professor Costanzo has held a number of key administrative roles that were instrumental to the successful development of the Southampton Business School. As Director of the Southampton Business School (SBS) PhD Programmes, she successfully contributed to the redevelopment of the PhD programme and established its worldwide reputation by attracting 150+ high quality candidates from all continents. In the last five years, prior to her appointment as Head of School, as Head of Department she enormously contributed to the development of Department of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (DSIE), which has become one of the very few distinctive UK academic departments in the subject area of strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship. In leveraging the interdisciplinary research underpinning the DSIE, she has been a founder member of the Centre of Inclusive and Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CISEI) and, recently, she has become the research lead and founder of the Family Business Lab. She is one of founder members of the SBS ‘Strategic Group’ playing a key role in setting out the refreshed SBS vision, mission, goals and values.
She is an active reviewer for a number of leading academic journals (Human Relations, British Journal of Management, Journal of Small Business Management, and European Management Review to cite a few). She is on the editorial board of the British Journal of Management and European Management Review, and she served as an Associate Editor of the European Management Review (2015-2018). She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Sinergie (Italian Journal of Management).
Research
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.
Publications
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Supervision
Current PhD Students
Teaching
Professor Costanzo has taught on the following postgraduate programmes:
- MSc Global Entrepreneurship
- MSc Family Business
- MBA Strategic Decision Making
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
Professor Costanzo holds a PhD from the University of Leeds. She previously worked at the University of Leeds as Research Fellow in Financial Services and the University of Surrey as Lecturer in Strategic Management. She joined the University of Southampton as Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and was subsequently promoted to Full Professor in Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in 2016.
- Head of Southampton Business School (2020 -).
- Head of Department of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2015-2020).
- Director of SBS PhD Programmes (2015-2019).
- ESRC-DTC Management & Business Studies pathway coordinator (2015-2020).
- Member of the SBS Executive Team (2015 -).
- Member of the SBS Small Grant Committee (2015 -).
Prizes
- Nomination for top 10 Strategic Management Society/McKinsey Best Papers (USA) (2001)
- Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence for Outstanding Paper in JFRC (2007)
- BAM Strategic Foresight SIG Best Paper Award (2008)
- EURAM/SIMA Best International Management SMEs Paper (2017)
- Paul Harris Fellowship (2022)