## Research **How do individuals and organisations navigate tensions between who they are and how others evaluate them?** I am an organisation theory scholar who studies social evaluations. My research connects macro-level societal systems with micro-level psychological processes to examine how actors make consequential decisions when their identities create competing demands and the audiences judging them disagree on what counts as legitimate. My work is organised across two interconnected streams. ### Navigating Identity and Inequality This stream investigates how identity and inequality shape the evaluation of ventures and the actors who lead them. When entrepreneurs cross cultural boundaries or class lines, they encounter audiences with different evaluative criteria. My research examines how these actors navigate competing demands while building ventures that must satisfy multiple stakeholders simultaneously. One line of work examines how intercultural and social-class experiences shape entrepreneurial strategy and paradoxical reasoning, particularly in transnational social ventures where founders must satisfy both social and commercial stakeholders. A second explores how stereotypes between impact investors and social entrepreneurs distort judgments of impact and worth, creating systematic biases in capital allocation. Other projects investigate how communities navigate tensions of association and disassociation in inclusion discourse, and how minority and immigrant entrepreneurs seek recognition and resources through pathways shaped by cultural and gender-based barriers. These studies reveal how personal experience and structural inequality interact to determine who is evaluated as legitimate, by whom, and on what terms. The patterns observed in entrepreneurial contexts raised a broader question: how do the evaluative systems themselves get built, disrupted, and remade? ### Reshaping Knowledge and Governance This stream examines how technologies and institutional structures reshape the foundations of legitimacy, accountability, and decision-making. When new technologies emerge or institutional arrangements shift, the criteria for what counts as legitimate knowledge and responsible governance change with them. One line of work investigates how public blockchains establish new grounds for truth and authenticity in digital markets, creating transparent records that reshape how actors establish credibility in decentralised systems. A second examines how large language models introduce new standards of transparency and accountability in qualitative research, transforming methodological practice and raising new ethical questions. Other projects explore how ancient governance reasoning recovered through AI can extend contemporary approaches to sustainability governance, and how public sector boards manage competing accountability demands when institutional complexity creates conflicting evaluative criteria across nested audiences. These studies trace how technological and institutional innovation reshapes what counts as legitimate knowledge and responsible governance, often creating new forms of evaluation that actors must then navigate. ### The Connection Together, the two streams show that legitimacy is simultaneously a personal negotiation and a structural condition. The first stream reveals how actors navigate evaluative criteria they did not set; the second reveals how technologies and institutions remake those criteria from underneath. Both point to the same fundamental tension: between who actors are and how they are judged. --- **Phenomena:** Transnational venturing, social entrepreneurship, impact investing, immigrant and indigenous entrepreneurship, inclusion discourse, blockchain markets, historical governance, public sector governance. **Theoretical Interests:** Organisational paradox, cross-cultural psychology, social evaluations (class, status, stereotypes, authenticity, legitimacy). **Methods:** Grounded theory, narrative interviews, netnography, participant observation, comparative case study, questionnaires, systematic review. --- ### Current Work I am currently developing several projects within these streams. One examines the social evaluation paradox in impact investing, exploring how moral framing activates stereotypes that distort investor judgment. Another investigates public blockchains as legitimation infrastructure, examining how immutable records reshape authenticity claims in digital markets. A third explores how large language models can strengthen methodological transparency and reproducibility in qualitative research while introducing new accountability challenges. I am also developing a multi-year research programme on temporal diversity in governance, examining how ancient reasoning systems can inform contemporary approaches to sustainability and institutional decision-making. This work is supported by a Leverhulme Research Project Grant application currently under review. This work builds toward a unified framework for understanding how evaluative systems evolve and how actors navigate them across organizational contexts. ### Publications **Mafico, N.,** Krzeminska, A., Härtel, C. and Keller, J., 2021. The mirroring of intercultural and hybridity experiences: A study of African immigrant social entrepreneurs. *Journal of Business Venturing*, vol. 36, no. 3, 106093. ABDC A*. - Annual PhD Publication Award, Monash Business School Department of Management, 2021 - Best Student Paper Award, Gender and Diversity Division, Academy of Management, 2019 - Kauffman Best Student Paper on Gender and Diversity in Organisations and Entrepreneurship Award, Academy of Management, 2019 - Best Paper Award, 'Business for Society' Strategic Interest Group, European Academy of Management, 2019 Carmine, S., Andriopoulos, C., Gotsi, M., Härtel, C.E., Krzeminska, A., **Mafico, N.,** Pradies, C., Raza, H., Raza-Ullah, T., Schrage, S. and Sharma, G., 2021. A paradox approach to organizational tensions during the pandemic crisis. *Journal of Management Inquiry*, 30(2), pp.138-153. ABDC A. **Mafico, N.,** Krzeminska, A., Härtel, C. and Keller, J., 2024. Upward, downward or steady: How social class experience shapes transnational social venturing. *Journal of Business Venturing Insights*, 21, p.e00462. ABDC A. de Gruyter, E., Gordon, J., Qureshi, I., Bhatt, B., **Mafico, N.**, 2025. Financing indigenous entrepreneurs: A review and research agenda. *Australian Journal of Management*, ABDC A.