castellarin.elisa@spes.uniud.it

tel. +39 0432 24 9352

(Supervisor Daniel Pittino)

Innovation and Decision Making

My PhD research project deals with decision making within teams.
As a first step we carried out a literature review on decision making within entrepreneurial teams. We found that this is a topic overlooked both in the entrepreneurship and in the managerial literature and that most part of papers consider separately only an aspect of the topic. Consequently we proposed a model which integrates the existing different streams of research: studies on decision making process, on entrepreneurial teams, on heterogeneity among team members, on conflict, on entrepreneurial cognition.
As a second step we are currently carrying out an empirical qualitative research on the team decision making in software development. In particular, we aim to verify if the use of different types of decision making processes (autocratic, consultative, collaborative) is related with the size of the firm, in particular if there are substantial differences between the start-up phase and the professional management stage of the firm. We based our classification of types of decision making processes on the Vroom-Yetton contingency model .
We intend to further expand the results of this study through a quantitative research that will be carried out the next year.
In addition to this research project, I am participating in a project in collaboration with two firms on the user experience of circular saw blades, on the introduction of smart tools in this sector and more in general on the consequences of the industry 4.0 on production and marketing activities.