Daniela Montemerlo

Daniela Montemerlo is an Affiliate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at SDA Bocconi School of Management. She is a Full Professor of Management and Family Business at the Università dell’Insubria and Professor of Strategic Management in Family Businesses at Università Bocconi.

At SDA Bocconi, she teaches Corporate Governance in Executive MBA programs as well as in executive education programs; she also teaches family business in executive programs for family business owners and boards of directors of medium and large companies as well as for financial institutions. She has been the Director of several courses, both for the open market and on a custom basis.

Her research activities, both national and international, focus on family business and corporate governance. In the family business area, her main interests concern family and corporate governance, family and ownership agreements, next generation development, intra and inter-generational dynamics, co-leadership models, strategic management, organizational change, managerialization processes, women’s leadership. In the corporate governance area her topics are: governance design (ownership agreements, structures, functioning rules); selection, the role and special challenges of various types of board members and top managers; special challenges of diversity.

She is the author and co-author of many books and articles. Her books include: “Continuità generazionale e accordi familiari”, EGEA 2009; “The Family Constitution. Agreements to Secure and Perpetuate Your Family and Your Business”, Palgrave MacMillan 2011, with John Ward; “Fratelli e sorelle in azienda”, EGEA 2013; "Le scelte improrogabili delle imprese familiari", EGEA 2019. Her articles have been published in journals like the Journal of Small Business Management (Governance systems in family SMEs: the substitution effect of family councils on official mechanisms, 2013, with L. Gnan and M. Huse), Family Business Review (Ownership, governance and management issues in small and medium-size family businesses: a comparison of Italy and US, 1999, with G. Corbetta), Economia & Management (family business articles). She is an advisor to family businesses and entrepreneurial families in Italy and the USA, supporting leading generation, next generation, inter-generational groups of family owners and executives as well as non-family managers and the whole ownership-management system. She has served as an independent director and Internal Control and Risk committee member of the listed banks Credito Bergamasco and Banco Popolare as well as the non-executive Director of Aletti GestielleSGR. She is currently a non-executive board member of Rubelli Spa and In.Pro.Di Spa. She chairs the Supervisory Body of IesBiogas srl and Cubogas srl (Snam Group). She is a Fellow and Founding board member of IFERA (International Family Enterprise Research Academy), the world association of family business scholars. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Entrepreneurship Research Journal, of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Institute for Corporate Values (Istituto per i Valori d’Impresa) as well as of the Extended Editorial Committee of Economia & Management.

Daniela earned a degree and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Università Bocconi.

Teaching domains

• Family Business
• Corporate Governance
• Growth Strategy
• Strategic & Business Planning