Finland has been acting as a gateway between East and West. In the 1990s, the Finnish government started emphasizing the importance of regional headquarters and the strategic position of Finland as a business center for Western firms going to Russia, the Baltic States, and Eastern European countries.
Headquarters are important for businesses and societies alike because they employ high-skilled employees, bring tax revenue, and help to attract additional investments to a location. Headquarters also have symbolic value for signaling that a location is worth further investments. Therefore countries often compete to attract them to their own locations. The recent Talouselämä article (24.09.2020) featuring one of our researchers, showcases the relevance of headquarters for Finland as a business location.
Headquarters activities are becoming increasingly disaggregated both geographically and organizationally within multinational corporations. Many corporations have intermediary headquarters, such as regional or divisional headquarters that manage activities within a given region or business unit. These headquarters, however, are not necessarily visible to outside actors as these responsibilities are often given to existing subsidiaries in addition to their local activities. To identify these somewhat hidden intermediary headquarters located in Finland, we have conducted research among foreign-owned subsidiaries since the early 1990s.
The identification of headquarters activities is increasingly difficult as the top management team may not be physically located in these headquarters any longer. Today, management responsibilities are increasingly dispersed to various units within the multinational corporations along their value chains. Therefore, in our research, we examine not only the intermediary headquarters but also the associated international management responsibilities that individual managers hold in Finland.
Through our research, we seek to find answers to the following questions:
Our objective is to identify all headquarters and international management responsibilities that foreign-owned subsidiaries have in Finland. We are sending a survey to all foreign-owned companies in Finland in 2021. Through the survey, we also seek to identify any other operations they may have in Finland, enabling us to better understand the extent of subsidiary operations.
We have conducted a longitudinal analysis of foreign-owned companies’ regional headquarters located in Finland since 1993. Regional headquarters have been studied at our International Business Unit of the Aalto University School of Business (former Helsinki School of Economics) since 1993 as part of Finland’s International Business Operations (FIBO) research project led by Professor Reijo Luostarinen. The first data collection in 1993 covered almost all foreign-owned subsidiaries in Finland, and 374 of these 1,509 subsidiaries had regional headquarters responsibilities. We followed them up in 1998 and 2010. Now in 2021, we are conducting a fourth data collection round to understand how many of them still have headquarters responsibilities.
Foreign-owned corporations bring a significant amount of value to Finland. In these graphics we have illustrated where these corporations are located in Finland as well as their country of origin.
A three-decade longitudinal analysis on the headquarters (HQ) dynamics in Finland contributing to the discussion on what makes Finland an attractive location for HQ responsibilities.
This research is one part of the HQ Location Research Project conducted at the International Business (IB) Unit of Aalto University School of Business.
We study foreign-owned subsidiaries’ operations and international management responsibilities in Finland. On this page, we briefly explain what data we are collecting and how this data ties into the goals of the research. The Privacy Notice can be found at the end of the page.
A list of published academic papers, media articles, and master's theses related to the project all in one place.
Contact details:
We are pleased to answer any questions that you may have regarding our research. Please contact our research team: [email protected] or 050 911 3173.
Alternatively, you can contact post-doctoral researcher and project manager Iiris Saittakari ([email protected]).