Rachele CAVARA

Position
Research Grant Holder
E-mail
rachele.cavara@unive.it
956505@stud.unive.it
Website
www.unive.it/people/rachele.cavara (personal record)
Office
Venice School of Management
Website: https://www.unive.it/dep.management

I am Rachele Cavara,

a research fellow in Business Management at the Venice School of Management in Italy. In my research I try to understand how organizations undertaking complex innovation projects for the advancement of society sometimes deviate from their original purpose, leading to harmful outcomes instead.

For my PhD, I analyzed the Volkswagen emissions scandal as a drift in the project of innovating green diesel technology in the mid-2000s. Currently, for my research fellowship, I am studying the weakening of European emissions standards as a regulatory drift in the project of improving European air quality.  

My work is interdisciplinary, and I draw on insights from sociology, engineering and organization studies to address questions in technology and innovation research. An essential driver of my research is a close engagement with the phenomenon of interest, which I typically study in-depth, through single case study designs. I am deeply committed to field methods, and frequently employ interviews and in-depth archival research, which I combine with historical contextualization and verification when appropriate.

Beyond conducting research, I enjoy teaching classes in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the fields of Business Management, Business Economics, Sustainability and Business and Society. I also enjoy disseminating research results beyond academic circles through newspaper articles, blog posts and podcasts.

If you would like to connect for any reason, please feel free to reach out via the email address provided on this webpage. Meeting new people is one of the most rewarding aspects of academic work, and I am always happy to do so!