Nkosana Mafico

• Lecturer in the Strategy Group
• Course Organiser:
  • Managing Across Borders and Cultures (Undergraduate)
  • Global Business and the Sustainable Development Goals (Undergraduate)
• Member (Research Champion)
  • Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability Committee 
• Member 
  • MEPALS (Minoritised Enterprise Policy and Action Lab Scotland)

Nkosana strengthens how leaders and institutions navigate uncertainty, reconcile cultural conflict, and act with moral clarity.

He received his PhD from Monash University and was awarded the Mollie Holman Medal, a top academic honour awarded annually to 10 doctoral graduates across the university for exceptional research. Nkosana also holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Queensland with first-class honours and was valedictorian at the business school.

As a researcher he investigates how leaders make governance decisions under conditions of uncertainty, cultural conflict, and moral tension. His work, published in the Journal of Business Venturing, has earned three Best Conference Paper Awards from the European and American Academies of Management. An award-winning educator at the University of Edinburgh Business School, he has received four Excellence in Teaching Awards since joining in 2022. His teaching philosophy emphasises developing critical, resilient thinkers who excel in complex, uncertain conditions.

Previously, he was the CEO of a software company backed by Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company. For three years, he served as the managing director of CYALA (the Council for Young Africans Living Abroad), which he founded in 2015. Since 2021, he has supported governance and strategic implementation in the NFT industry, exploring innovative governance models for emerging technologies.

Nkosana’s governance work spans academia, culture, and policy. He serves on the boards of:

• Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS): A Scottish Government agency distributing £1 billion annually to support 180,000 students.
• Historic Environment Scotland (HES): Overseeing Scotland’s historic sites, including Edinburgh Castle, which collectively attract 3 million visitors annually.

Past appointments include roles on the advisory council of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Queensland Multicultural Advisory Council, and as Chair of the Global Shapers Community in Australia, an initiative of the World Economic Forum.

How can leaders govern effectively when human judgment collides with social complexity and disruptive technology?

This question lies at the core of Nkosana's research. His work integrates macro-level societal systems and micro-level psychological processes to understand how leaders navigate uncertainty, reconcile cultural conflict, and act with moral clarity.

Governing Identity and Inequality: This stream investigates how identity and inequality shape legitimacy, resource access, and value creation. Projects explore how:

• Immigrant and social-class experiences influence entrepreneurial strategy
• Communities navigate moral and belonging tensions in inclusion discourse
• Minority entrepreneurs seek recognition and fairness through culturally aligned capital governance
• Stereotypes in investment evaluation distort judgments of impact and worth

Together, these studies illuminate how leaders reconcile personal and structural contradictions when pursuing purpose and performance.

Governing Knowledge and Futures: This stream examines how technologies shape what markets regard as legitimate, what communities accept as true, and how institutions plan for the future. Projects unpack how:

• Public blockchains anchor truth and authenticity in digital markets
• Artificial intelligence introduce new standards of transparency and accountability in qualitative research 
• Large Language Models can harness insights from ancient civilisations for modern sustainability governance

Collectively, these studies reveal how technological innovation is reshaping the foundations of knowledge, responsibility, and foresight in contemporary governance.

Phenomena: Transnational venturing, social entrepreneurs, impact investors, socio-technical disruption, diaspora communities, digital communities, digital dark age

Theoretical Interests: Organisational paradox, cross-cultural psychology, organisational sociology, social evaluations (class, status, stereotypes, authenticity, legitimacy) 

Methods: Narrative interviews, netnography, comparative case study, questionnaires, vignettes, digital archival