Towards Americanisation and the corporate university in an elite business school: A leadership history of the Helsinki School of Economics/Aalto University School of Business, 1974–2022

Abstract

Leading business schools all over the world increasingly tend to conform to the American-style business school model. During recent years, a global discourse about the emergence of the corporate university has also arisen. The term has been used to refer to universities that have uncritically adopted management concepts and practices from corporations. However, little is known about how elite business schools from different parts of the world are strategically developed towards increased Americanisation and corporatisation, and what are the consequences. Therefore, this paper offers a leadership history of the Helsinki School of Economics/Aalto University School of Business, the leading elite business school in Finland, over the research period of 1974–2022. During the research period, the idea of an American-style top-tier business school gradually gained more and more ground among faculty. Moreover, after the Aalto University was created in a large university merger in 2010, increased corporatisation occurred.

Keywords:

• Americanisation
• corporate university
• business schools
• leadership history
• Helsinki School of Economics
• Aalto University

Introduction

Elite universities and business schools are institutions that educate and train individuals for the highest positions in society. Admission to these institutions is normally extremely selective, students tend to come from similar, often privileged backgrounds and end up working in top positions in the industry or the public sector (Augier & March, 2011; Van Maanen, 1983). What is more, top business schools all over the world increasingly tend to conform to the American-style business school model connected to the perpetuation of neoliberal, managerialist and shareholder-first ideologies (e.g. Fleming, 2020; Fotaki & Prasad, 2015; Rhodes et al., 2018).¹ Alajoutsijärvi et al. (2014) call this the legitimacy paradox: by conforming to the globalised American model, these schools actually lose more than they gain by giving up their own organisational heritage. Critical perspectives to the American business school model and the related concept of corporate university (e.g. Korpiaho et al., 2007; Weinberg & Graham-Smith, 2012) are proliferating in recent research on universities and business schools (Fleming, 2020, 2021; Parker, 2014, 2018).

However, little is known about how elite business schools from different parts of the world are strategically developed towards increased Americanisation and corporatisation, and what the consequences of that development are. Elite universities tend to be very central societal actors in their local contexts, especially in smaller countries. They provide a world-view for the future elite of the country, and their ecosystem connects their students, faculty members and alumni to larger, global networks of knowledge creation and innovation. Many less prominent universities may mimic or even copy their study programs and administrative structures. During the last 20–30 years, increased Americanisation has often been viewed by local business school leaders all over the globe as something that is necessary in order to reach a ‘world-class’ status as a higher education institution.

To fill this research gap, this paper offers a leadership history of the Helsinki School of Economics/Aalto University School of Business (henceforth, HSE/Aalto BIZ), the leading elite business school in Finland, over the research period of 1974–2022. During the research period, the idea of an American-style top-tier business school gradually gained more and more ground among faculty, put forward by many US-educated professors occupying key leadership positions of the school. Among other issues, a separate MBA program was established in the 1980s; an English language BBA program was launched in the 1990s; the economics and finance doctoral programs were modelled on the US example in the 1990s; the HSE was the first Nordic business school to gain the AACSB accreditation in 2007; and an American-style tenure system was established in 2010. However, above and beyond these mostly positive developments, more negative consequences flowed from increased centralisation and managerialisation after the Aalto University merger in 2010.

The historical case study of HSE/Aalto BIZ, based among other sources on rich archival and interview materials, is of broader theoretical and practical interest due to the following considerations. First, the focal organisation, undisputedly the leading university-level elite business school in the Finnish context (Juusola et al., 2015; Kettunen et al., 2012), underwent a significant transformation from a private standalone business school to a state-controlled business school in 1974 and back to being a part of a larger privately held, increasingly corporatized university in the 2010s. As far as the author of this study knows, HSE/Aalto BIZ is the only leading elite school in any developed country to have made such a 360° transformation during the last 50 years. Second, the entire research period saw a gradual increase in what is termed Americanisation, i.e. the adoption of ideas, practices and ways-of-working (Kipping & Bjarnar, 1998; Nolan, 2012; Zeitlin & Herrigel, 2000) from leading US business schools. What is more, after the Aalto University was created in a large university merger in 2010, increased corporatisation has occurred. Third, the leadership history narrated in this article through four distinct periods demonstrates how key leaders and their regimes steered the institution towards increased Americanisation and, finally, towards the adoption of the corporate university. Fourth, and finally, an additional contribution of the article may be identified in defining the concept of a leadership history more clearly.

What is a leadership history?

There are abundant histories of leadership and management thought and related concepts (see e.g. Grint et al., 2011; Wren & Bedeian, 2009), but studies on the evolution of leadership thinking and practice in distinct organisational contexts are rarer. Leader-centric biographical studies mainly focus on the person and her leadership style, and do not usually elaborate on other factors relevant to leadership in an organisation. These factors include such issues as other key actors than the focal leader (other leaders and naturally, followers), organisational structures, processes, systems, defining events and contingencies, or the features of national, industry, organisational, and leadership cultures. Any of these factors alone or in conjunction may have significant effects on the top decision-maker’s understanding and acts of leadership over time. The unit of analysis is thus the organisation and its strategic leadership² and not an individual leader or even a leadership team.

When it comes to leaders themselves, individual leader personality refers to the behaviour of an individual that is relatively constant over time and is not very context-dependent (Perugni et al., 2016, 3). Leadership style, in turn, reflects how the leader and the leading team give direction, implement plans and motivate people. It also essentially concerns the general atmosphere and the institutionalised ways-of-working that prevail in the organisation. Dominant leadership styles identified in the literature are often described as laissez-faire, transactional, transformational, and servant leadership (Avolio et al., 2009; Bass & Avolio, 1993; Jung & Avolio, 1999). In any leadership history, one should be interested not only in individual leaders but in the regime that is in power. The regime is a group of influential people on the top levels of an organisation who are responsible for defining its strategy and leadership style for the time period in which the coalition is in power (cf. Hambrick, 2007; Hambrick & Mason, 1984).

In practice, organisational regimes in the upper echelons of an organisation develop a more or less intentionally dominant leadership style that moderates how well the organisation functions and eventually performs. This style does not naturally always fall neatly into any of the categories established in the literature, and it is subject to change over time, especially when the regime at the top changes. These changes in leadership style per se are of considerable historical interest, but so far have been scantily studied. Within the emerging field of management and organisational history in general, it is somewhat surprising that over and above leader biographies, leadership histories are scarce.

Business schools, Americanisation, and the corporate university

As stated in the Introduction, the integrity and ethics of the post-World War II American-style business school has increasingly been in question during the last 20 years (e.g. Alajoutsijärvi et al., 2014; Khurana & Spender, 2012; Murillo & Vallentin, 2016). Critical approaches centrally note that that the business school is often totally committed to propagating an increasingly neoliberal ideology. There are also doubts about whether business schools indeed address ‘real life’ problems in a meaningful fashion (Dunne et al., 2008; Ford et al., 2010; Pfeffer & Fong, 2004). From critical viewpoints, the problem is not merely about a code of ethics or pedagogy but the systemic influence of global capitalism’s cultural hegemony (e.g. Boussebaa & Tienari, 2021; Dunne et al., 2008; Fotaki & Prasad, 2015). An important theme is also the erosion of collegiality (e.g. Miles et al., 2015; Weinberg & Graham-Smith, 2012), or the destruction of the idea of academia as a ‘lifestyle’ of care (Lund & Tienari, 2019) in the more and more corporatised university and its business school.

Americanisation as a cultural phenomenon has been studied from a variety of perspectives. Importantly, it has been broadly connected to the ideas, values, methods, practices, and techniques that spread from the US to Europe and other parts of the world as the global position of the United States strengthened, especially after the Second World War (Kipping & Bjarnar, 1998; Nolan, 2012; Schröter, 2005; Zeitlin & Herrigel, 2000). As Åström Rudberg and Kuorelahti (2021) recently state, Americanisation is far from a straightforward, unilinear process of adoption. Quite the contrary, it essentially involves the circulation, adoption and further development of original ideas and practices. Thus, the outcomes include an interesting mixture of American and local ways-of-working in a specific context (Kipping & Bjarnar, 1998). Sometimes, Americanisation has been proven to be of much less importance than supposed at the surface level (e.g. Grünbacher, 2012). As the rest of this article will report, a mixing of a Finnish business school culture with stronger and stronger American influence is what essentially happened in the context of the HSE/Aalto BIZ over the last 50 years. As Juusola et al. (2015) state, the leading Finnish business school engaged in heavy imitation and transmutation of American ideas and practices, especially in terms of the superstructure, research logic and the educational programs of the school. However, many national conceptions still persisted, as will be argued in this study, too.

Finally, the emergence of the corporate university (Fleming, 2020, 2021; Weinberg & Graham-Smith, 2012) has been a central issue related to the evolution of ‘world-class’ universities during the last 10 years. Originally, the term corporate university was used to refer to corporations’ own internal universities, sometimes termed ‘McUniversities’ (Parker, 2014), serving immediate corporate interests in research and education. Later on, the term has been used to refer, mostly derogatively, to former state-controlled universities that have uncritically adopted management concepts, organisational structures and practices from corporations. The erosion of collegiality has been identified as one of the most severe consequences of the increased corporatisation of universities (Weinberg & Graham-Smith, 2012). Fleming (2021) centrally connects the corporate university to the following developments: an ‘Edu-Factory’ viewpoint to higher education; an authoritarian turn in university leadership; metrics mania, the demise of the classical Homo Academicus faculty member; excessive focus on measurable impact and an ‘Academic-Star’ complex of hiring committees. All in all, Fleming (2020, 2021) argues that corporatisation has led universities to develop lethal ‘dark academia’ workplace cultures, alienating faculty members and students alike. Americanisation is often seen as a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence of the corporate university. Ivy League class elite independent universities with abundant endowments seldom become corporatised, despite being thoroughly American. The typical example of a corporatised university is a former state university that strives towards ‘the world class status’ by the adoption of the academic market logic (e.g. in the pricing of degrees and in recruiting faculty) and corporate-style governance practices (Alajoutsijärvi et al., 2014).

The research site

In this study, I elaborate on how the upper echelons of the organisation have shaped the evolution of the Helsinki School of Economics/Aalto University School of Business, the leading elite business school in Finland over an almost 50-year research period of 1974–2022.³

In 1974, after a lengthy negotiation process, the Finnish government nationalised the financially ailing private standalone university-status School of Economics (Kauppakorkeakoulu), creating a state-controlled entity, renamed Helsinki School of Economics (Helsingin kauppakorkeakoulu) that became almost totally funded from governmental education budget. Only in the 1990s did external research funding and tuition-based executive education programs start to play a significant role in the total financing of the school. The 1970s leftist—centrist governments wanted to ensure tuition-free education for all eligible citizens in universities now tightly controlled by the Ministry of Education. Having to quickly adapt to bureaucratic and hierarchical government control, the school still retained some of its earlier culture of corporate orientation, even if this was not very popular in the 1970s left-leaning societal atmosphere (Helsingin kauppakorkeakoulu, 1983; Lehtonen, 2014; Michelsen, 2001). Despite the fact that numerous new business schools were founded in provincial universities between the 1960s and the 1990s, the HSE remained by far the largest business school and retained its elite status⁴ over the years. The employment prospects of HSE graduates have always been excellent in the Finnish labour market.

The era of more or less tight government control lasted until the end of 2009, when the Aalto University was formed in the beginning of 2010 by merging the Helsinki University of Technology (Teknillinen korkeakoulu, founded 1849; ca. 15,000 students and 3700 personnel), the HSE (founded 1911, ca. 4000 students, 500 personnel) and the University of Art and Design Helsinki (Taideteollinen korkeakoulu, founded 1871, ca. 2000 students and 450 personnel).⁵ The Aalto project (often called ‘the Innovation University of Finland’, see e.g. Markkula & Lappalainen, 2009) had been the flagship project of the sizable reform in the Finnish university system taking effect in 2009–2010. In the process, the Aalto University was privatised.⁶ For the HSE, this meant reprivatisation, since unlike the two other merging entities, it had been a private business school from 1911 to 1974.

In this article, I present a periodised narrative of the strategic leadership of different regimes at the top of the HSE/Aalto BIZ in 1974–2022. Four distinct periods and related regimes are described and analysed in this leadership history. This periodisation was formed according to the dominant coalition in power during a certain era, keeping in mind the trade-offs of periodisation (e.g. Hollander et al., 2005). My historical narrative will consistently cover during each period: (1) the personalities and leadership ideas and styles of the chancellors, rectors, deans and their top management teams, (2) the most significant events in the history of the HSE/Aalto BIZ when each regime was in power, and (3) the key strategic outcomes of the period. All of the three issues are assessed from the viewpoint of gradually increased Americanisation and a move towards what is called the corporate university.

Methodology

My overall research strategy has been to approach former leaders and leadership at the top of the focal organisation from an interpretive history (a ‘microhistory’ of leading) perspective (Ankersmit, 2013; Vaara & Lamberg, 2016). This approach comes close to how mentalities are studied in the Annales School of historiography: it involves writing a history of mentalities, or the attitudes, values and belief systems of individuals and social groups (Clemente et al., 2017, 21–22).

Table 1 presents the sources of the focal study and connects them to the key issues studied in the leadership history of the HSE/Aalto BIZ (see points 1–3 above). My research process complies with the criteria of Gill et al. (2018, cf. Maclean et al., 2016) for the writing of trustworthy historical research. I worked in various ways to enhance the following criteria: (a) credibility by deeply immersing myself in the historical context, by working with multiple competing interpretations, and by examining the trustworthiness of my sources critically; (b) confirmability by revealing underlying assumptions and actively citing precisely and in detail the documents I used as sources; (c) dependability by providing a detailed analysis of the four periods under scrutiny; and (d) transferability by offering a rich contextualised narrative and aiming for careful data and source archiving throughout the research process. The right hand side column of Table 1 contains information on how I used my sources along the research process. Essentially, my research process proceeded from the reconstruction of the timeline of key concrete events during the entire research period related to the gradual process of Americanisation and the emergence of the corporate university in the focal organisation to the production of the fourfold periodisation of leadership eras, underpinned by the reconstruction and interpretation of key leader characteristics and their leadership styles.

Table 1. Sources and source use in the focal study.

	Types of material	Use in historical analysis
(1) Documents from HSE/Aalto archives, author’s personal archive	Correspondence Curricula, course descriptions, agendas, meeting minutes, memos used in workshops, meetings, and other events Strategic planning documents Documents of the HSE Doctoral centre Annual reports of HSE (1974–2009) Annual reports of Aalto University (2010–2021) Author’s personal archives from 2001 containing numerous documents related to the focal organisation (e-mails, memos, plans, other correspondence) Altogether over 3200 documents, partly digitised	Reconstruction of the timeline of key events during the entire research period. Production of the fourfold periodisation of leadership eras. Reconstruction and interpretation of leader characteristics, leadership styles and intentions. Identification of new data sources and informants. Overall, getting insight and material for interpretative work related to leadership during the four eras.
(2) Interviews and feedback	Former rectors, vice-rectors, chancellors, deans, and professors Administrative personnel and unit directors Altogether 18 semi-structured video interviews Informal discussions and feedback (both written and oral) from 15 former leaders and professors on the original manuscript of the paper	Reaching complementary information and clues necessary for the reconstruction of the sequence of key events. Complementary insight into the personalities and intentions of central actors. Evaluation of facts and assumptions concerning especially the timeline of key events and outcomes of the four eras. Finding new archival evidence and identifying key informants.
(3) Biographies and other literature central to our analysis	Official histories of the HSE: Saarsalmi (1961), Helsingin kauppakorkeakoulu (1983), and Michelsen (2001) HSE/Aalto anniversary publications (Pöykkö & Åberg, 2010; Pöykkö & Jalas, 2010) Biographies/autobiographies of key actors (e.g. Lehtonen, 2014) Professor festscrifts, speech collections (e.g. Kasanen, 2011) Who’s Who in Finland publication 1978 Academic articles on HSE/Aalto	Reconstruction of timeline of key events. Understanding and contextualising the event sequences and strategic choices related to Americanisation and the emergence of the corporate university. Complementary insight into the personalities and intentions of central leaders and their leadership teams.
(4) Media material	Newspaper and magazine articles on HSE and Aalto throughout the research period. Altogether over 200 individual articles.	Reconstruction of timeline of key events. Understanding and contextualizing the event sequences and strategic choices related to Americanisation and the emergence of the corporate university. Helping to weight the trustworthiness of other materials by referring to the in situ created media texts.
(5) Autoethnografic aspects	Author’s more than 20-year experience as a full professor, department chair, program director and an MBA dean in the focal organization. Author’s personal acquaintance with most of the key actors. Author’s personal archive significantly feeding to (1).	Understanding and contextualising the event sequences and strategic choices related to Americanisation and the emergence of the corporate university. Complementary insight into the personalities and intentions of central leaders and their leadership teams. Understanding of the changing leadership culture of the focal organisation, long-term evolutionary trends.

Firstly, as to primary sources, I utilised the archives of the Helsinki School of Economics concerning the period from 1911 to 2009 as well as its departments and research centres. The documents I was interested in primarily contain formal materials related to professorial and director appointments and key strategic decisions. The archives contain a lot of materials from different years (correspondence, curricula, course descriptions, meeting minutes, memos, HSE/Aalto annual reports 1975–2021, budgets, memos written about the situation in different departments, professors’ resourcing proposals, etc.). Some documents from the Aalto era were also available in the archive. Moreover, as I have been a full professor at Aalto and its two predecessor universities for more than 20 years, I have accrued a vast personal archive containing internal documents such as memos, letters and e-mails, external and internal communications, and other materials. My personal archive thus added considerably to the research materials of my study, especially for the Aalto era.⁷

Secondly, I also had at my disposal 18 deep interviews⁸ with former HSE professors, rectors, vice-rectors and deans, or other key administrators, elaborating on their careers and the evolution of the HSE/Aalto BIZ as a school.⁹ These video interviews provided an invaluable set of oral-historical source materials (e.g. Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2005). Three ex-rectors/chancellors/vice-rectors/deans and 12 senior professors also reviewed my narrative and offered their valuable comments as to my key interpretations. All interpretations presented and possible errors contained in this article, however, remain my own.

Thirdly, as to secondary sources, I have made use of the official HSE histories by Saarsalmi (1961), Helsingin kauppakorkeakoulu (1983), and Michelsen (2001) for a great deal of historical detail and information about different faculty members. HSE’s 100^th anniversary publications (Pöykkö & Åberg, 2010; Pöykkö & Jalas, 2010) also contain numerous highly informative accounts by key professors and other decision-makers throughout the history of the focal organisation. Lehtonen’s (2014) biography of chancellor Jaakko Honko (1922–2006) has also proven invaluable, particularly in trying to understand the cultural context within which the earlier HSE leaders acted. In addition, anniversary festschrifts and other writings (e.g. Who’s Who in Finland 1978) about key persons (Honko et al., 1989; Lilja, 1997a, 1997b) and professor autobiographies (e.g. Pitkänen, 2013; Uusitalo, 2019) were also used. Moreover, Kasanen’s (2011) work contained the former HSE rector’s annual inauguration speeches (1996–2009) and articles related to the creation of a more autonomous university sector in Finland. Some articles examining the evolution of Aalto university have also been published in academic journals (e.g. Aalto branding logics in Aspara et al. (2014); the post-merger integration process in Tienari et al. (2016); academic resistance and resilience in the face of neoliberal managerialism, Siltaloppi et al., 2022).

Fourthly, I have also collected numerous articles published about the HSE/Aalto University in domestic and international professional magazines and newspapers. Finally, having personally lived through almost half of the research period as a professor in the focal organisation as well as acting in many different administrative capacities (such as a department head or as the director of the school’s doctoral program), this study also exhibits some autoethnographic features (e.g. Wall, 2006), I have thus engaged in retrospection, which is the introspective process of remembering (e.g. Gould, 1995). All in all, however, the autoethnographic aspects of the focal study can be argued to be a minor issue. Most importantly, my experience with the focal organisation has provided me with a large personal archive of documents I have been able to use in my historical study.

A leadership history of the Helsinki School of Economics/Aalto University School of Business 1974–2022

The Jaakko Honko era 1974–1989: ‘establishing the state-controlled elite school’

When the Finnish state took over the HSE in 1974 and the whole school had to be structurally reorganised, professor Jaakko Honko had already been a vice rector (1963–1969) and the rector of the private HSE (1969–) for over a decade. He had also been the ardent chief negotiator from the side of the HSE in the nationalisation negotiations with the government, on the basis of which, for instance, the Ministry of Education replaced the Ministry of Trade and Industry as the entity governing the business school. The most important outcome of the negotiations had been that the shrinking but sizable funds that had been donated to the HSE over the more than 60 years of the school’s existence would not be nationalised but placed in the HSE Support Foundation (Kauppakorkeakoulun tukisäätiö)¹⁰ (Helsingin kauppakorkeakoulu, 1983, 125–130).

The most important changes regarded the administration of the school since it now had to conform to the same regulations as other state-controlled universities such as the University of Helsinki. For instance, the HSE board, previously occupied by external industry and banking sector dignitaries, was replaced with an internal board the members of which were elected among professors, other personnel, and students; none of these groups was to have a majority.¹¹

The running of everyday operations was the responsibility of the rector and a vice rector (later two vice rectors, one for teaching, another for research) and the heads of different departments. As the HSE was a rather small standalone business school with university status, department heads had considerable power, reporting directly to the rector. A chancellor (usually the previous rector or an influential individual from outside the school) oversaw all this activity but usually did not interfere much in the activities of the school except as a symbolic leader (Helsingin kauppakorkeakoulu, 1983, 89–112; Michelsen, 2001, 191–286).

Honko, an accounting professor who had earned his doctorate at the HSE in 1955 (Honko, 1955), remained the rector until 1980 with Dr. Klaus Waris (1914–1994),¹² the ex-managing director of the Bank of Finland, a well-known economist, as the part-time chancellor. After Waris’s retirement, Honko himself took over as the full-time chancellor from 1980 to 1989. (Lehtonen, 2014, 103–120, 131–143) Honko ruled with a steady albeit collegial hand.¹³ He was an able administrator and keen on developing the HSE as an elite Nordic business university, establishing tight academic contacts e.g. with the other Nordic countries, Germany and the US.¹⁴ Early on, Honko saw the necessity of developing the HSE as a hub of top-notch business expertise and know-how in Finland. He was content that adopting many American business school innovations such as specific research centres and including the MBA in the program portfolio of the school would be vital to the strategic development of HSE as the leading Finnish business university (Lehtonen, 2014, 144–202).

During his chancellorship, Honko was not content to remain as a mere symbolic figurehead. Thus, rectors Veikko Leivo (in office 1980–1981) and Arvi Leponiemi (in office 1981–1990) assumed more operative roles, whereas Honko clearly led the school’s strategic development (Lehtonen, 2014). Leivo (1925–2020)¹⁵ held a doctorate in industrial engineering from the Helsinki University of Technology. He had been appointed a professor of marketing at the HSE in 1968. From 1982 onwards, Leivo was appointed to an endowed professorship in entrepreneurship. Leivo was an entrepreneurial and business-oriented academic whose rectorship did not last long enough for him to make a mark on HSE strategy. Honko clearly held the reins in that respect. What is more, Leponiemi (1926–2002)¹⁶ was an econometrics professor. Both rectors shared similar quantitative educational backgrounds with several lengthy research visits to the US.¹⁷ According to his former doctoral students, Leponiemi was a gentlemanly but somewhat distant figure who got along well with his fellow faculty members.

In addition to the establishment of the new organisational structure and government-compatible ways of working in the 1970s, the HSE established a Small Business Centre (Pienyrityskeskus) at the small eastern Finnish town of Mikkeli in 1980 to support entrepreneurship and regional development in that area (see e.g. Mustalampi, 2010). What is more, an American-style full-time 2-year MBA program was launched in 1983 with the launch of the International Centre (Kansainvälinen keskus),¹⁸ also responsible for developing HSE’s global student exchange, and more resources were directed to executive education that had begun as a separate organisational unit in 1970 (Jääskeläinen & Wallenius, 2010). Earlier on, the idea of offering open-enrolment programs for a fee for executives, experts and managers had been alien for most HSE faculty members. HSE executive education’s JOKO part-time open enrolment leadership program had proven a market success among senior executives in the 1970s (Helsingin kauppakorkeakoulu, 1983, 69–73). The program portfolio of the executive education unit grew steadily throughout the 1980s to include both open-­enrolment and tailored programs, and provided more and more teaching in English (e.g. Jääskeläinen & Wallenius, 2010).¹⁹

The central outcomes of the Honko era, spanning over two decades, started with the successful transformation of the private business school to a state-controlled entity. What is more, according to the Finnish political objective of making a master’s level degree obligatory for all graduates in all universities, the HSE gradually adopted a new 5-year M.Sc. (in Finnish ekonomi, ylempi) degree in the late 1970s and the early 1980s (first students in the new degree graduated in 1981)²⁰ without the former traditional 3-year bachelor-level ekonomi degree.

Honko and his rector team had strongly opposed this national-level change, since practically all master’s level students had always worked full-time and the professors saw no absolute necessity for such a lengthy program in business studies. Moreover, many American-style features were adopted in the functioning of the school as research centres were established, an MBA program was launched, more ambitious doctoral programs were planned and established, and the role of executive education grew steadily over these years in the program portfolio of the school. The vast majority of HSE students thought that all of this was generally a positive signal that their school was developing towards an international orientation as the Finnish business life was also rapidly internationalising and adopting global ways of working (especially in banking and finance) in the 1980s (Wahlroos, 2021, 46).

The interregnum period 1990–1995: ‘the old guard cedes its power to a new generation of Americanizers’

Chancellor Honko retired in 1989, and rector Leponiemi the following year. Former CEO of the KOP commercial bank, Dr. Jaakko Lassila (1928–2003, doctorate in economics at the HSE in 1966; Lassila, 1966), had been appointed as chancellor in 1989, and continued until 1992. In contrast to Honko earlier, he took the position only part-time. Professor of economics Fedi Vaivio (1927–2021)²¹ and Professor of international finance Veikko Jääskeläinen (1921–)²² took the reins as rectors in 1991–1992 and 1992–1996, respectively. After his formal retirement, Vaivio also acted as the chancellor part-time in 1992–1995. All in all, Lassila, Vaivio and Jääskeläinen were short-term leaders of an interregnum period, during which a new generation of professors gradually took over the leading positions of the school from the departmental level upwards. Most of the newcomers had a more or less dominant American background. As a former director of the HSE international centre, rector Jääskeläinen worked especially hard to internationalise the student body of the school, both in terms of recruiting foreign degree students and in arranging numerous student exchange contracts with literally dozens of universities all around the world, especially in Asia. As a Yale Master of Arts graduate from 1959, Jääskeläinen also knew the American higher education system very well. Among his fellow professors, Jääskeläinen was a long-term strategist and wanted the HSE to follow the path of high-quality American business schools.

In 1990 an important decision was also made to establish an English language 3-year BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) program in the Mikkeli unit of the HSE. Like the MBA, this program was first outside the Finnish degree system, and was delivered by foreign professors and lecturers mostly flown in from the US. Gradually, the program emerged as the highest-status bachelor-level program in the school’s portfolio, attracting numerous foreign students over the years to go through the intensive 3 years in Mikkeli. In 1996, the Jääskeläinen regime also made the important decision to form a limited liability company out of the executive education unit of the HSE.²³ This decision, though difficult at the time, later created a leading Nordic executive education firm, now called Aalto University Executive Education Ltd. These two central decisions also constitute the most important outcomes of this short period.

The Eero Kasanen era 1996–2009: ‘accreditations, globalisation, and striving towards the American model’

Dr. Eero Kasanen (1952–), a Harvard DBA, was appointed a full professor of finance and rector of HSE in 1996. Kasanen was more than 20 years younger than the former rectors and chancellors, and clearly represented a new, US-educated generation at the top of the school. Dr. Aatto Prihti (1939–),²⁴ who had a lengthy career in business, had been appointed as a part-time chancellor in 1995. After his retirement in 2004, another ex-CEO, Dr. Matti Lehti (1947–)²⁵ acted as the last part-time chancellor of the independent HSE in 2004–2009. Lehti was also a central figure in developing the Aalto University concept between 2005 and 2010.

Kasanen immediately launched a sizable strategy project to elevate the school towards a ‘world class’ level. He redefined HSE’s strategic intent and mission: ‘HSE strives towards continuously being the leading business school in Finland, to reach a respected status in European business research and teaching and to network globally with leading actors’.²⁶ Kasanen was an interesting character of high ambition level and personal malleability. He was liked by almost everyone, and gave considerable degrees of freedom to departments and key professors to develop their own excellence strategies. He worked in a highly collegial way, rarely stepping on anyone’s toes despite making significant changes in the school’s organisation and ways-of-working. Despite his Ivy League-learned collegiality, Kasanen was strict on following progress in all of the key areas he had defined as central to reaching world-class status. These areas essentially included global business school accreditations (‘the triple crown’²⁷), organising the school’s market-based operations into limited liability companies in the late 1990s, and a more globalised stance including executive education operations in Europe and Asia.²⁸

Moreover, research excellence in forming larger and more ambitious research teams and in publishing in international top-tier journals was emphasised. Kasanen’s vice rectors (such as professors Risto Tainio, Jyrki Wallenius, Olli Ahtola, and Timo Saarinen) were seasoned professional researchers with a lot of personal experience of US business schools.²⁹ Thus, a collegial and increasingly ambitious leadership culture emerged, focussed on what rector Kasanen called ‘the eternal strategic business school issues’: internationalisation, quality of teaching and research, corporate partnerships, and collaboration with other leading universities and business schools.³⁰ Best practices in these issues were increasingly sought from leading American institutions.³¹

Importantly, based on the fact that the school’s executive education (JOKO Executive Education Oy, later HSE Executive Education Ltd.) and applied research (LTT Tutkimus Oy/LTT Research Ltd.) units now operated as limited liability companies, Kasanen wanted to create a ‘HSE concern’ that would generate profits for the school to use in order to augment limited state financing. Towards the last years of the Kasanen era, these companies generated an annual profit of nearly one million euros, needed to finance the gap between HSE’s annual expenditure and the budget given by the state. Moreover, external research funding also started to play a more and more significant role in 2005–2009. A subsidiary executive education company was founded in Singapore in 1996, and executive MBA programs were offered by 2009 in Finland, Poland, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and the PRC.³²

The AMBA accreditation was gained in 1997, and the EQUIS and AACSB accreditations followed in 1998 and 2007, respectively. The HSE was thus the first Nordic business school to receive the triple crown of all three major accreditations, especially important for its tuition-based open enrolment programs in Europe and Asia. What is more, the HSE had joined the growing CEMS (Community of European Management Schools) community of leading European schools in 1998.³³ The B.Sc., M.Sc. and doctoral programs in Finland remained by law free for Finnish and EU students. However, the share of tuition-based education in HSE’s degree program portfolio was growing, reaching about 50 per cent of all graduates in 2008.³⁴

The HSE Department of Basic Research, founded in the late 1960s to focus on doctoral education, was transformed into the HSE Doctoral Education Centre (Tohtorikoulutuskeskus TOKO) in 1997.³⁵ The objective of the centre was to further professionalise doctoral education, help create larger research projects, and incentivise researchers to publish in higher-quality journals. A scholarship scheme was devised to provide all professors and researchers incentives to publish in top journals. At the same time, the number of international journal publications also increased considerably, with some papers published in the leading journals in business administration and economics such as the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Political Economy. The economics and finance doctoral schools, strictly modelled following the US example, were especially successful in producing world-class quality³⁶ doctoral graduates. On the other hand, more social science oriented and qualitative research designs were adopted at the HSE in other disciplines such as marketing, management, and management accounting. All in all, between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s, the HSE gradually emerged as a strongly research-oriented business school with a balanced focus on both quantitative and qualitative research.³⁷

What is more, large research projects and research centres were also founded during the Kasanen era. The Centre for Knowledge and Innovation Research (CKIR) is an example of a research centre founded in the late 1990s around topics of great interest to industry. A large number of externally funded projects were conducted in CKIR, in the Small Business Centre and in different departments. These projects employed dozens of researchers annually, and provided significant funding for doctoral and post doc level studies. An annual fee-based partnership program was also established with major corporations such as Nokia at the same time.³⁸

The key outcomes of the Kasanen era focussed on the numerous above-mentioned changes in the organisation of the HSE and its key practices. The leadership culture was entrepreneurial and gave considerable degrees of freedom for department heads and research centre directors to develop their units towards the ‘world-class’ level. However, as the HSE was a relatively small business school with limited resources, most HSE faculty members looked forward to the coming Aalto era.

The Aalto University era 2010– ‘the emergence of the corporate university’

Prof. Eero Kasanen continued in the position of the dean of Aalto BIZ³⁹ in 2010, followed by Prof. Jyrki Wallenius, a former vice rector, in 2011. In the founding charter of the new Aalto University, broad independence in academic affairs had been promised for the three schools and university-level strategic issues were to be agreed on between the three schools equally. However, already in 2011, the former Helsinki University of Technology was split into four different schools (Engineering, Science, Electronics, and Chemistry) which immediately tipped the precarious balance of power in the entire university in their favour.

Long-term HSE leaders Kasanen and Wallenius saw this and gradually fell out with the new leadership of the Aalto University, most importantly the new president, Prof. Tuula Teeri (1957–, president 2010–2017) and chairman of the board Dr. Matti Alahuhta (1952–, chairman 2010–2016), an ex-Nokia top management team member and CEO of the elevator manufacturer Kone. Teeri and Alahuhta, in the view of Kasanen and Wallenius, had a limited understanding of the current strategic situation of the business school and wanted to centralise more than was necessary in Aalto decision-making.⁴⁰

As the subsequent deans would find out, strategic degrees of the freedom for Aalto BIZ leaders would be seriously impaired by continuous interference (often in the name of cross-school ‘harmonization’) from Aalto’s top leaders into the affairs of the business school. Thus, Kasanen and Wallenius graciously stepped down, and Aalto chose two external deans, Ingmar Björkman (1959–, in office 2012–2019) and Timo Korkeamäki (1965–, in office 2020–)⁴¹ to integrate the school more tightly into the university. The American business school model was clearly something these two external deans preferred.

The new ‘managerial’ leadership model at Aalto had been eagerly awaited by many faculty members, since it promised an American-style tenure career system with increased financial resources for all schools, swifter and less hierarchical decision-making at all levels, less bureaucracy and better chances for schools, departments and research groups to form their own success strategies, and more interdisciplinary study options for students. On paper, all this looked perfect in 2010. However, the post-merger integration process proved far from easy and practically lasted a decade, creating considerable tensions between and inside individual Aalto schools. According to Tienari et al. (2016), ambitious interdisciplinary strategy, global-level Aalto branding, and corporate style human resources systems acted as key integrative mechanisms in the merger process. All in all, even the enhanced resources of the new university were not able to create a truly world class organisation during the first 10 years of the university.⁴² Most of the extra resources went to the four technology schools, and business professors increasingly felt their school was the cash cow of the large university.⁴³

Two large fundraising campaigns and added Aalto-specific governmental financing brought more than a billion additional euros to the Aalto Foundation and to different schools from 2010–2020. However, the Foundation was reluctant to make strategic investments e.g. in new tenure track lines or in increasing Aalto professors’ globally low salary levels to match international standards. New professors’ qualification levels were set to match much higher ranked universities. Towards the tenth anniversary of Aalto in 2020, many business school professors felt that the university had invested nothing extra in the business school—except for a glistening new glass and steel main building at the Otaniemi campus inaugurated in 2019.⁴⁴ The school employed approximately the same number of academic faculty members in 2020 as it did in 2010. Many professors had looked forward to growth in the number of professors at all levels.

What was worse, professors’ contract terms had only deteriorated during the same period: incentives for attracting external research funding were first diminished and then deleted altogether, research funding allowance packages lowered, and the earlier possibility for an up to 50 per cent visiting professor’s appointment in a foreign university was lowered to 20 per cent. The university also openly broke its founding charter by creating a centralised decision-making system which gave very little leeway especially for school-specific adjustments in professors’ contracts or incentives. Based on the university-level tenure committee’s recommendations, often biased towards qualification standards adopted in science and engineering, the president of the university (from 2017 onwards, professor Ilkka Niemelä, 1961–) more than once declined to tenure or appoint professorial candidates deemed as competent by the business school. All in all, many business professors thought that the technocratic and hierarchical leadership culture of the ex-HUT had taken over in the whole of Aalto. The expected new and open, less-hierarchical Aalto culture at least had not yet materialised by the early 2020s.

On the brighter side, the Aalto tenure system had attracted many talented researchers especially to the business school. The faculty is more international in 2022 than ever before: up to 20–40 per cent of the personnel of different departments are non-Finnish citizens. The number of international top-tier publications soared in 2010–2020 in practically all departments and disciplines. Aalto University Executive Education Ltd. also launched a part-time American-style DBA program for seasoned executives in 2013. Aalto’s success stories, above and beyond the business school, also include interdisciplinary platforms such as the Design Factory,⁴⁵ and the popular start-up platform AaltoES (Aalto Entrepreneurship Society) initiated by Aalto students. The latter platform has e.g. created the hugely successful global start-up event Slush (now one of the largest start-up events in the world) and led to one of the largest buy-outs in the business history of Finland, the acquisition of the Finnish food delivery start-up Wolt by the US firm DoorDash for about 7 billion dollars in 2021.⁴⁶

All in all, the governance system of Aalto BIZ evolved into a curious mixture of managerial power and rigid, bureaucratic rules and inflexible processes – a peculiar organisational form described in the literature on the corporate university (e.g. Fleming, 2021). After all, one of Aalto’s promises had been to lessen the bureaucratic burden that had characterised the state-controlled era. HR and other functional professionals were hired from corporations with negligible understanding of universities and little respect for professors’ competencies and traditional collegial decision-making. A strict KPI (Key Performance Indicator) scheme for professors was introduced, focussed on looking at the rolling 4 year average results of each individual in terms of teaching, publications and external project financing acquisition. However, in 2022 it still remains to be seen how the scheme will affect professors’ work and remuneration. It is curious that the traditional viewpoint of a university professor and their research team as a repository and developer of a unique knowledge base (over and above directly measurable output) seems to be absent from the Aalto personnel strategy. The concept of collegiality is also completely missing from the published Aalto code of conduct, to which all employees must strictly adhere in all of their actions.⁴⁷

However, in Finnish academia in general, a resistance movement against the increasing corporatisation and managerialisation of universities is gathering momentum (for academic resistance at Aalto University specifically, see Siltaloppi et al., 2022). For instance, a resistance seminar was arranged by some prominent professors in April 2022 at the University of Helsinki.⁴⁸ So far, however, this resistance movement has not been taken very seriously by Finnish university leaders.

Discussion and conclusions

American influences versus local ways-of-working

The national influence of HSE/Aalto BIZ can be argued to have been considerable, materialising through many essentially American-modelled programs over the course of the period of analysis of 1974–2022: the MBA programs, the DBA, and shorter executive education programs mainly delivered in English, even for locals. What is more, regional business schools have always tended to strongly mimic HSE/Aalto BIZ in their educational programs, and many have even introduced the MBA or the eMBA to their portfolios.

However, it is not always borne in mind that national university and business school variants also have their own intrinsic cultural value (Engwall, 2009) outside of globally accepted key performance indicators and business school rankings. As demonstrated above, HSE/Aalto BIZ as a business school gradually evolved into an idiosyncratic mixture of indigenous and American features, the latter often designed to make the school appear more international and world-class to the external observer. However, several inherited domestic features continue to affect the business school strongly, the most important being the strong reliance upon government funding and relative lack of donated funds, particularly for the business school. The basic degrees (the B.Sc. and the M.Sc.) still exhibit many traditionally Finnish features, such as the existence of many courses in foreign languages and the inclusion of a relatively demanding academic master’s thesis. Despite Aalto’s fundraising efforts, companies and HSE/Aalto graduates haven’t yet developed a US-style culture of giving back to their alma mater. What is more, the university has not been able to dismantle its bureaucratic administrative culture which, at Aalto, has deteriorated into an even more secretive and undemocratic format.

Americanisation and the corporate university as distinct phenomena

Roughly half of all tenured professors and associate professors at the HSE appointed or in office between 1974 and 2009 have had an ‘American background’, meaning that they either held an American degree or had spent more than one academic year in the US. Many of these individuals were extremely influential in developing their school towards the adoption of American concepts and practices during the entirety of the period under investigation. During the Aalto era, the number of professors with a US background has not diminished but there has also been an increase in people with much more diverse backgrounds from, for example, France, the UK, and Germany.

As for the central ideas of key actors behind Americanisation, pre-1990 leaders wanted more than simply to adopt well-functioning concepts (such as the MBA or the idea of an American-style doctoral program) from the US. For them, an important issue was also to show that, by Americanising its leading business school, the Finns adhered to the free Western market economy context. In the 1970s, for example, there had been voices suggesting that Marxist economic theory should also be taught at HSE (Lehtonen, 2014, 124–130). For Honko’s admittedly conservative regime, an increasingly Americanised HSE was also a statement that Finland was not willing to be more integrated into the Soviet bloc and its economic system: a system with which this small open economy still conducted lucrative trade.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the Kasanen regime saw American ideas and practices as necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) inputs for the building of a world-class business school. Accreditations and the ability of HSE faculty to publish in the highest-ranking international (i.e. mostly American) academic journals in their respective disciplines were important in proliferating this top-quality ethos for younger generations of researchers in the school. Finally, during the Aalto era, the research and teaching activities and the faculty of the school have become truly global. At the same time, however, academic criticism against the American-style business school has also mounted, and many faculty members have assumed increasingly critical attitudes towards some forms of Americanisation (for instance, ritualistic research and teaching quality and impact assessments) that are not deemed to fit the Finnish university context. The American model is not necessarily seen as the absolute guarantee of the highest academic quality anymore.

The post-merger integration and leadership problems that have emerged with the creation of Aalto University have often been identified by faculty members as symptoms of excessive Americanisation, even if most of these issues have little or nothing to do with Americanisation per se. Consequently, the emergence of the corporate university should be treated as a clearly distinct phenomenon, albeit one that has many of its roots in the appreciation of American universities’ ways of working.

From the historical perspective of HSE/Aalto BIZ, Americanisation has resulted in mostly positive developments for the school, which cannot necessarily be said about the alarming ‘flash emergence’ of the corporate university during the Aalto era. The process of Americanisation at the HSE was gradual and took several decades to materialise. However, the corporatisation of the Aalto University has been much more rapid and unexpected for most academics. By 2022, the university had evolved into an entity that exhibits at least the following features that Fleming (2020, 2021) listed as characterising a corporate university: a strong ‘production process’ viewpoint to higher education, that is, producing an increasing number of graduates at all levels at as low a cost as possible; a centralised and authoritarian turn in university leadership (often behind a mask of soft talk and political correctness); metrics mania; demise of collegiality and the weakening rights of the individual faculty member; and an excessive focus on measurable impact. What seems to be missing is only the ‘Academic-Star’ complex of hiring committees which have come to realise that the resources of the university do not usually permit the recruitment of academic star faculty knowledgeable of their market value.

On the emergence of Americanisation and the corporate university

For many leaders and key faculty members at HSE/Aalto BIZ, America has traditionally been a source of inspiration and good academic practices. For some faculty members, American ways-of-working have even been an obsession and an absolute model to be followed unquestioningly. As demonstrated in my historical narrative, individual key leaders and their teams deliberately pursued Americanisation on many fronts at the HSE. Later on, probably without an intentional grand strategy (Kornberger & Vaara, 2022), the development of an increasingly centralised Aalto University has provided a context in which many features of the corporate university proliferate (Fleming, 2021; Weinberg & Graham-Smith, 2012). Many structures, processes, and systems adopted from foreign (foundation-controlled) universities, also outside of the US, have thus gradually given rise to a de facto corporate university. Leaders and managers (and perhaps academics, too) who have a mental fit with this sort of an organisation have been recruited to the institution. This has created a strong ‘spiral of corporatisation’, criticised by many old-school scholars, most of whom originally favourably regarded the creation of Aalto as a great opportunity. Many of these people have now retired or have otherwise left the university. At Aalto, the process of corporatisation thus seems to have involved more systemic emergence and less strategic action by individual leaders or their regimes (for emergence, see Sawyer, 2001). Thus, the emergence of the corporate university here can be seen as an example of a collective phenomenon, collaboratively created by individuals yet not reducible to individual action. At Aalto, for instance, despite continued critical opinions, there has never been a significant resistance movement among academic personnel. The perspective of this paper, leadership history, can help us better understand such an evolutionary process.

Future research

In terms of future research, HSE/Aalto BIZ history, especially after 1990, demands more attention from different viewpoints; for instance, Michelsen’s (2001) study of the first 100 years of the school practically ends with the nationalisation of the school. These viewpoints, in addition to the leadership history presented in this article, could focus on the following issues: the history of different departments and their disciplines, the history of the school’s domestic and international publishing activity, the history of the administrative structures, processes, and systems of the school, and the history of the HSE and Aalto brands and their underpinning higher-education marketing activities. Finally, it would be interesting to compare the Americanisation and corporatisation paths of other leading Nordic business schools such as the Stockholm School of Economics or the Copenhagen Business School with that of HSE/Aalto. Finally, the above-mentioned issue of how and why ideologies such as the corporate university emerge and come to dominate organisations deserve more research attention in the future.

Acknowledgements

The author wants to thank all colleagues within and without the Aalto University organisation who gave their valuable comments to the various versions of the manuscript. Special thanks are due to Rector emeritus, Professor Eero Kasanen, Vice-Rector emeritus, Professor Jyrki Wallenius, and Chancellor emeritus Matti Lehti for their comments and help.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henrikki Tikkanen

Dr. Henrikki Tikkanen is a Professor of Business Administration (Marketing) and the A. I. Virtanen Professor of Consumer Research in the Aalto University School of Business in Finland. His research interests cover marketing, strategic management and organisational history.

Notes

1 Based on a discourse analysis of articles in the leading management education publication outlets, Korpiaho et al. (2007, 43–53) identify the following ‘Anglo-American’ approaches to management education: the traditional approach (mainly focusing on the MBA, including its critiques), the revised forms of the science (evidence) based approach and the competence-based approach, and the alternative forms of service learning, action-based education and critical management education. This paper, however, mainly focuses on the first-mentioned approach and its implications to management research and education in the HSE/Aalto BIZ context.

2 A widely-cited review characterizes strategic leadership in terms of an organization’s ability to change (transformative/adaptive capacity) and to learn (absorptive capability), connected with the leaders’ managerial wisdom (related to their age, industry background, education, tenure, visions, leadership style, charisma, and network of contacts, for example). See Boal and Hooijberg (2000).

3 For the leading role of HSE/Aalto in the field of Finnish business education, see Kettunen et al. (2012).

4 For elite business schools and their specific features such as their ‘consecration’, see Holmqvist (2022).

5 Vice-president Prof. Jorma Kyyrä’s alumni presentation 23.10.2010.

6 Since 2010, controlled by the private Aalto Foundation. There is a discussion of the emergence of privatized, foundation-based universities in Finland, too (e.g. Merimaa, 2021, 6).

7 However, due to reasons of confidentiality, I have not always been able to refer to specific documents when making a certain interpretation.

8 Professionally conducted, recorded, and video edited by the former HSE administrative director, Mr. Esa Ahonen.

9 I deliberately chose only to rely on interviews and subjective comments of former HSE/Aalto BIZ leaders, as this study seeks to put forward the viewpoint of business school leadership to its Americanization and corporatization. As to the evolutionary process during the Aalto era, for example, the viewpoints of Aalto University’s former and current top leaders might differ from the ones presented here. Current or recent Aalto BIZ leaders have not been interviewed and their comments have not been sought as they have signed a non-disclosure agreement about any strategic issues regarding the university and the business school.

10 HSE annual report (1973–1974, 8–12).

11 HSE annual report (1974–1975).

12 See Honko et al. (1989).

13 In Honko’s obituary 23.2.2006, two of his former doctoral students, Dr. Aatto Prihti and Prof. Kalervo Virtanen, describe his personality as follows: ‘…Honko was both paternalistic and humane. He gave his subordinates clear instructions and insisted strictly that they were adhered to. At the same time, he created a good, entrepreneurial atmosphere filled with a lot of humour where everyone felt at home’. https://www.hs.fi/ihmiset/art-2000004377330.html.

14 Honko had made two longer research visits to the US, one in 1959-1960 and another one in 1974. Who’s Who in Finland (1978, 242).

15 Who’s Who in Finland (1978, 520).

16 Who’s Who in Finland (1978, 520); Ilmakunnas et al. (2002).

17 Leivo had studied at Indiana University in Bloomington and at Wayne State University in Detroit, defending his doctoral thesis in industrial engineering in 1966 at the Helsinki University of Technology on the quantitative optimization of the sales organization at Volkswagen of America. Leponiemi visited the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1962–1963, studying econometrics under professor Lawrence R. Klein. Leponiemi defended his doctoral thesis in economics at the University of Helsinki in 1966. Who’s Who in Finland (1978, 518–520).

18 HSE annual report (1984–1985, 60–61). Later rector Prof. Jääskelänen led this centre for many years and was instrumental in boosting HSE’s inward and outward internationalization process in the 1980s and the 1990s. For instance, the MBA program had grown to ca. 60 students already in 1988, half of whom were international, and as many as 35 visiting foreign professors (mainly from the US) taught in the program. HSE annual report (1988, 33).

19 In his 1988 speech ‘30 years of executive education in Finland’ Honko stated ‘…All thoughts and ideas came largely from the US. However, the context, conditions and participants were Finnish. Applying these new ideas proved to be a sizable problem’ (Lehtonen, 2014, 93).

20 HSE annual report (1980–1981, 37).

21 https://www.aalto.fi/fi/uutiset/kansleri-fedi-vaivio-in-memoriam.

22 https://www.aalto.fi/fi/uutiset/lampimat-onnittelut-veikko-jaaskelainen-90-vuotta-1122021.

23 Interview of rector emeritus Veikko Jääskeläinen (21.8.2018).

24 Prihti had defended his doctoral thesis at the HSE in 1975 in accounting, see Prihti (1975).

25 Lehti had defended his doctoral thesis at the HSE in 1990 in management, see Lehti (1990).

26 HSE annual report 1997.

27 Consisting of business school accrediting organizations of the US-based AACSB (The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), EQUIS (EFMD Quality Improvement System, awarded by the European Foundation for Management Development) and AMBA (Association for MBAs) each reviewing the study programs, faculty and administration of the schools, providing them with legitimacy, status, and reputation (Alajoutsijärvi et al., 2018).

28 As the former HSE administrative director Esa Ahonen stated in this interview (15.2.2019): ‘…despite the heavy administrative burden of the state-controlled bureaucracy, we managed to pull through many significant reforms… such as accreditations and forming of limited liability companies owned by the HSE… Kasanen and Jääskeläinen were the most central figures during this era. Some of the actions such as founding a limited liability company to run our executive education operations were even considered illegal by some ministry bureaucrats… we were at least 10 years ahead of our time in the Finnish public sector’.

29 Interviews of professors emeriti Jyrki Wallenius (10.8.2021) and Olli Ahtola (28.3.2019).

30 Rector emeritus Kasanen said in his interview (15.2.2019): ‘Despite occasional tensions, the HSE has always been a tight professional and social community. … the same issues have been topical for a hundred years… basic issues have remained the same, details naturally change’. See also Kasanen (2011, 5–7).

31 For instance, in his first opening speech for the academic year 1996, rector Kasanen stated, ‘… we should compare our professors’ ways of working with those in top business schools, such as our honorary doctor Krishna G. Palepu of the Harvard Business School. These people shuttle eminently between the editorial boards of leading scientific journals, top-notch case teaching sessions and the boards of multi-national corporations’ (Kasanen, 2011, 14).

32 Interviews of rector emeritus Eero Kasanen and former HSE administrative director Esa Ahonen (15.2.2019).

33 HSE Annual reports (1997–2009).

34 HSE Annual report (2008). On average, HSE graduated ca. 400 M.Sc. graduates per annum from 2005 to 2009. At the same time, ca. 60–70 MBAs and ca. 300 eMBAs graduated from the HSE Executive Education courses (HSE Annual reports, 2005–2009).

35 HSE Annual report (1997, 8–12).

36 In other words, graduates employable in top-tier business schools and economics departments abroad.

37 As Professor emerita Liisa Uusitalo stated in her interview (9.2.2021): ‘From the early 1990s onwards, we were a credible research institution doing international level social scientific research’.

38 HSE Annual reports (1996–2009).

39 As to the name of the business school, a farce ensued in 2010. Many senior HSE professors would have liked to see the school called Aalto University Helsinki School of Economics as the HSE was already a relatively well-known brand internationally. Aalto university top leaders, however, vehemently refused this and consequently, the school was named Aalto University School of Economics (Aalto ECON) as a compromise for 2010-2011. In 2012, however, the more fitting Aalto University School of Business (Aalto BIZ) was adopted, an initiative of the new dean Ingmar Björkman (Aula et al., 2015; Aalto internal documents and memos 2010, Prof. of marketing emerita Mai Anttila’s interview (17.11.2021) Prof. of marketing emeritus Kristian Möller’s interview (2.9. 2020), confidential personal communications to the author 2010-2011, see also https://www.aalto.fi/en/aalto-university/history).

40 Matti Lehti goes as far as stating: ‘…a grave mistake was made in the choice of the first chairman of the board, which also affected the choice of the first president, the forming of the matrix organization, and the filling of the president’s staff mainly with people with Nokia backgrounds. The gradual emergence of the authoritative leadership culture of a large industrial corporation, unsuitable for a university, was partly possible due to the passive and silent stance of the academic leadership of the schools’. The last HSE chancellor, Dr. Matti Lehti, in written comments to the author, 6.4.2022 (reproduced with permission), also Matti Lehti’s interview (12.3.2019).

41 Dean Korkeamäki had finalized his degrees in the US (an M.Sc. in Gonzaga U. and a Ph.D. in U. of South Carolina 1996–2001) and acted as a professor of finance in Gonzaga University in 2001–2008. Thus, he had extensive experience of US business schools, too. https://www.linkedin.com/in/timo-korkeamaki-1a91b581/?originalSubdomain=fi

42 In an internal speech in December 2021, president Niemelä stated that in per student funding, Finnish universities still lag 20-50 per cent behind even their Nordic counterparts. Aalto got extra governmental basic funding during its first years of operation. By the 2020s, this special financing has stopped and Aalto must compete for its funding with other Finnish universities on equal terms. However, the Aalto Foundation controls capital assets amounting for over 1,3 billion euros in 2021 (Aalto University Annual Report 2021, https://www.aalto.fi/en/aalto-university/key-figures-of-2021-and-reports). Leaders at the top of the Aalto University have so far been very coy in investing this money in anything strategic – except for erecting new buildings at the Otaniemi campus (Interviews of chancellor emeritus Matti Lehti (12.3.2019), rector emeritus Eero Kasanen (15.2.2019), personal communications to the author 2010–2021).

43 Even if EU citizens do not need to pay tuition fees in Finnish universities, the Ministry allocates a certain sum for the university annually for every graduate, partly based on timely graduation (the total government funds allocation mechanism has become more complex year after year, but there is no possibility to cover this topic adequately here; https://okm.fi/en/higher-education-and-research). In business studies, student and graduate numbers have traditionally been high compared to most other disciplines and thus produce a lot of resources for the university (Interviews of rector emeritus Eero Kasanen (15.2.2019), and chancellors emeriti Matti Lehti (12.3.2019) and Aatto Prihti (2.10.2018)).

44 As to the construction of a new main building to the Otaniemi campus, more than 70 per cent of business school faculty members and students had been against giving up the heritage HSE main building erected in 1950 in downtown Helsinki. However, Aalto top leadership forced this decision down the throat of the business school, causing some tenured professors even to resign (Interviews of chancellor emeritus Matti Lehti (12.3.2019), rector emeritus Eero Kasanen (15.2.2019), Aalto planning documents 2016-2019, personal communications to the author).

45 See e.g. Björklund et al. (2011).

46 See e.g. Lewin (2021).

47 https://www.aalto.fi/en/aalto-university/code-of-conduct-values-into-practice.

48 The organizers of the seminar were centrally asking: ‘How have our universities failed to produce a subject that would be able to defend the free and autonomous university and its values? The stated main objective of the new university law of 2009 was to secure the special organizational disposition and autonomy of our universities but its factual effects have been exactly the opposite. Most of our university intelligentsia have adapted to this loss of autonomy, novel hierarchical management styles and governance from the outside without any resistance. In this seminar we thus ask: how has this been possible?’ https://yliopisto2020.fi/miksi-yliopisto-luopui-vapaudestaan/.