NICOLA MISANI

Courses a.y. 2025/2026

I teach Management and Sustainability in a variety of courses at Bocconi University. I am the program director of “Creating Value through Sustainability”, an intensive executive open program at SDA Bocconi, where I have also taught in numerous custom programs on sustainability for Italian and multinational companies.


Biographical note

I am a Researcher (with tenure) at the Department of Management and Technology at Bocconi University.

I study sustainability, innovation, and business strategy. I am interested in the conditions under which business sustainability can succeed. Over the years, I have explored reasons why businesses should be concerned with reducing harm and addressing externalities, the performance implications of adopting sustainability initiatives, including their effects on competitive advantage, and how sustainability builds stakeholder relationships.

My current research focuses on sustainable innovations and their emergence in both entrepreneurial ventures and established organisations. I examine the factors that support the growth and success of these innovations, particularly in areas such as decarbonization and other grand challenges.

My work has been published in several academic journals, including the Business Ethics Quarterly, Ecological Economics, International Business Review, Journal of Business Ethics, and Journal of World Business.

I earned a degree in Business Administration at Bocconi University and then a degree in Philosophy at the State University of Milan. I received my PhD in Management Sciences from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.


About

Forthcoming on Business Strategy and the Environment: “Paving the Road towards Eco-effectiveness: Exploring the Link between GHG Emissions and Firm Performance”, with Stefano Pogutz and Angelo Russo. In this article, we investigate the drivers that lead to an increase in the firm's environmental impact under the conditions of increasing market performance by the firm.


Research interests

Business Ethics; Corporate Sustainability; Voluntary carbon markets.


Selected Publications

Xiong, Qiang; Fosfuri, Andrea; Misani, Nicola; Cheng, Yangyang
Greening the portfolio: LP preferences for social impact and sustainability orientation of VC funds
ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT ANNUAL MEETING PROCEEDINGS, 2024

Carraro, Stefania; Misani, Nicola
Discretion and refinement at the core of quiet luxury
ECONOMIA & MANAGEMENT, 2023

Russo, Angeloantonio; Pogutz, Stefano; Misani, Nicola
Paving the road toward eco-effectiveness: exploring the link between greenhouse gas emissions and firm performance
BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, 2021

Nicola Misani
Why and how to be a B corp or benefit corporation
ECONOMIA & MANAGEMENT, 2021

Antonio Tencati; Nicola Misani; Sandro Castaldo
A qualified account of supererogation: toward a better conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility
BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY, 2020

Misani, Nicola
Sustainability and implicit contracts
Sustainability, 2020