dr. MN (Magdalena) Cholakova

Biography

Magdalena Cholakova is an Associate Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship in the Department of Strategic Management & Entrepreneurship at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.

The research lines she is currently pursuing include: 

Entrepreneurial decision making in the context of early-stage idea evaluation and validation. She studies this topic both by using both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods. Her goal is to understand the mechanisms that support entrepreneurs in their early-stage idea validation efforts and to develop effective interventions that can maintain their motivation and belief in the entrepreneurial pursuit over time. She focuses on both cognitive and affect level factors that can play a role in this process, including counterfactual reasoning, attribution and appraisal processes.

Institutional complexity and strategic renewal. She focuses on the capacity of individuals within existing organizations to cope with change and pursue successful core innovations. She has addressed this topic by tapping into the microfoundations (cognitive and affective) of institutional complexity, studying how individuals' cognitive complexity affects the extent to which they perceive and respond to conflicting institutional logics differently. Similarly, she has also studied how individuals' ability to engage in both exploration and exploitation behavior can influence the organization's ambidexterity and performance. Her work here is both conceptual and qualitative.  

Effective decision making heuristics under Knightian uncertainty. She studies this topic in the context of angel investing (using verbal protocol analysis techniques) and crowdfunding (using quasi-experimental techniques).  

Crowdfunding and the role of pecuniary and non pecuniary incentives in investment decisions. Her work here is based on quasi-experimental techniques.

Magdalena holds a PhD in Business Administration and Management from Bocconi University, a MPhil in Organizational Behavior from Trinity College Dublin, a MSc in Statistics from Trinity College Dublin and BA in Integrated Social and Cognitive Psychology from Jacobs University (Bremen). Her research has been published in the Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Management, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practrice Journal, International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior, as well as in the Harvard Business Review.  

Magdalena also teaches across all levels, inlcuding undergraduate, graduate and executive education courses, for which she has received multiple teaching awards and nominations, including RSM's Innovative Teaching Award and Professor of the Year Award. She is also a certified 'Experiential Classroom' Teacher.

Research Interests: Entrepreneurial Reasoning, Early-stage Idea Validation, Cognition and Affect, Judgment under Knightian Uncertainty; Institutional Logics, Angel and Crowdfund Investing.