About us

Key facts & figures

Our faculty consists of 16 professors as well as 7 lecturers and full-time teaching staff. We have about 25 full-time doctoral students, and every year 8-10 students defend their PhDs.

Every year, around 100 master-level students graduate from our programmess. Annually, we provide over 30,000 ECTS credits.

Our faculty regularly publishes in the world's leading journals in our field, including: Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Operations Management, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Management Science or the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. 

We receive over 3 million euros in competitive research funding annually from the EU framework programmes, the Research Council of Finland, and Business Finland.

History

The history of our department goes back to 1923, when Bernhard Wuolle was awarded the first professorship in industrial management in the Nordics. In 1966, industrial engineering was created as a distinct subject with a separate intake for Finnish high-school graduates. In 1976, a separate Department of Industrial Engineering was established. 

The emphasis on combining technology and business and having a systemic-level understanding of business has never changed. The original research areas industrial management and work psychology still exist, though with somewhat different names. Since the 1980s, strategy and technology entrepreneurship have been added to the department's research areas.

Today, the department stands as a beacon of multidisciplinary research, and it plays a central role how Aalto University contributes to innovation and renewal of business and society. 

If you are interested in the history in the field of industrial engineering and management (IEM) in Finland and globally, as well as the history of our department, read the book Game Changers and Problem Solvers by our emeritus professor Eero Eloranta, available from the Aalto University Shop. The book is available also in Finnish Ongelmanratkaisijoita ja muutoksentekijöitä.