Hanken has defined internationalisation as one of its focus areas. For a business school in a small, open economy, this is a natural choice. Recently, many steps towards greater international involvement have been taken, and the results are emerging. The number of international refereed publications per faculty has been steadily increasing, making Hanken the best producing business school in Finland in 2010. For 2011, this ratio has further improved. Our international recruitment activities and our actions to get the AACSB accreditation are expected to further speed up this process. Incentives have also been initiated to motivate papers in top publications. Finally, Hanken researchers have received important international acknowledgements, such as Professor Christian Grönroos’ recent appointment as a Legend of Marketing. Regarding student enrolment, we can note the increase in applications to our international Master’s programmes. And now, as the Bachelor programme students move out for their term abroad, we can also foresee a significant increase in the number of exchange students at the Helsinki and Vaasa campuses, further internationalizing our activities on home ground. Areas of improvement do, admittedly, remain. Our low international research funding is an Achilles’ heel for Hanken, and given its high impact on our state funding, it is imperative for our faculty to figure out how to improve our international applications. International recruitment also remains a challenge. But on a general level, we are well on our way, and more than ready to compete in an international environment.

Real-life experiences of corporate mergers often tell of disappointment in terms of the synergistic benefits that fail to appear, or the severe organisational problems that arise. Although many studies have provided empirical material on internal divisions among actors coming from the previously separate organisations, we still know little about the sociopolitical forces at work in the upper echelons of corporate hierarchies. It is suggested in this paper that an examination of the emergent role identities in the upper echelons of a new corporate hierarchy can help us to understand the nature of these sociopolitical forces. The empirical analysis concentrates on a revealing merger case where Finnish Ovako and Swedish SKF Steel first joined forces, but where their organisational marriage broke down five years later. This analysis illustrates how behaviour consistent with the enacted role identities can create contradictory sociopolitical forces, and how this can lead to increasing tension and severe open conflict. The analysis suggests that a favourable turn in the business cycle is a condition that can easily hide such divisions with dramatic consequences later on.

So here we are again. Just as the fear that the financial crisis of 2008 would turn out to be a “double-dip” was starting to fade, the markets fell. On the surface, this crisis looks different. This is not a question of defaults in complex instruments, but fear of country defaults in very simple instruments. There is, however, at least one similarity: banks are again involved. For many countries, saving Greece is mostly a question of saving their own national banks. It also seems different because now the countries that last time played a crucial role in supporting the financial system are themselves weaker. As a professor in Finance, I feel much more in the mist now; there don’t seem to be any neat solutions - only very tough ones. For higher education in Finland, these tougher times have meant cuts in public funding. It is unfortunate that the educational system, which would benefit from predictability and stability, has to live with the markets. Fortunately, thanks to our very successful fundraising campaign, Hanken has a robust balance sheet. So, despite the mist in the financial markets, we can look to the future with confidence.

This article reviews research in Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) and suggests directions for its development. The power of this perspective lies in its ability to explain how strategy-making is enabled and constrained by prevailing organizational and societal practices. Our review shows how SAP research has helped to advance social theories in strategic management, offered alternatives to performance-dominated analyzes, broadened the scope in terms of organizations studied and promoted new methodologies. In particular, it has provided important insights into the tools and methods of strategy-making (practices), how strategy work takes place (praxis), and the role and identity of the actors involved (practitioners). However, we argue that there is a need to go further in the analysis of social practices to unleash the full potential of this perspective. Hence, we outline five directions for the further development of the practice perspective: placing agency in a web of practices, recognizing the macro-institutional nature of practices, focusing attention on emergence in strategy-making, exploring how the material matters, and promoting critical analysis.