Sustainable Cities and Multinational Corporations: A Future-Facing Perspective

Tiina Ritvala is Associate Professor of International Business and Assistant Dean at Aalto University, School of Business in Finland. Tiina is alumni of the SCANCOR Weatherhead Initiative in International Organizational Studies at Harvard University and has held visiting scholarships at Queen’s University, Canada and WU Vienna, Austria. Her research focuses on cross-sector partnerships between multinational corporations, nonprofits and governments in the contexts of high institutional complexity such as sustainable cities, energy transition and industry emergence. She has published widely on these topics for instance in the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of World Business, International Business Review and Journal of Management Studies. She serves as Principal Investigator (PI) of the research project.

Rebecca Piekkari is Marcus Wallenberg Professor of International Business at Aalto University, School of Business in Finland. Her research interests span across contemporary headquarters of multinational corporations; diversity, equality and inclusion; and qualitative methods in International Business research. She also has a long-standing interest in the role of language in International Business. Rebecca has published widely in leading management and international business journals. In 2021 she received the JIBS Decade Award for her article on theorizing from case studies co-authored with Catherine Welch, Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki and Eriikka Paavilainen-Mäntymäki. She has served as a guest editor of several special issues including the Journal of International Business Studies (2014) and the Journal of World Business (2011). She has also co-edited handbooks on qualitative research methods in International Business with Catherine Welch. She is Fellow of the Academy of International Business and the European International Business Academy. She leads sub-project 2.

Iiris Saittakari is Assistant Professor of International Business at Aalto University School of Business, and an incoming visiting scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Saittakari’s research focuses on multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) locational strategies. In addition to physical aspects, she is interested in the political, social and emotional dimensions of location. She is thus looking into the politicization of MNCs when making locational decisions, cities’ involvement in an attraction game when competing for MNCs’ investments, and stakeholder pressure mobilized against MNCs’ location decisions.

Sarianna Lundan is Professor and Chair in International Management and Governance, University of Bremen, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Aalto University School of Business. She also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Business Policy. Lundan is a Finnish citizen, and has been an Associate Research Fellow at the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy ETLA. Lundan is a pioneering scholar in the field of IB who has studied extensively sustainability issues in MNCs. She leads sub-project 1.

Gunnar Leymann is Post-doctoral Researcher at University of Bremen, Germany. Leymann’s expertise lies in MNCs and foreign direct investment, as well as qualitative comparative analysis.

Nina Granqvist is Associate Professor of Management at Aalto University School of Business, and Senior Editor of Organization Studies, a Financial Times Top 50 journal. Her research areas cover emerging industries and technologies (e.g., solar technology, nanotechnology, quantum computing), as well as materiality and aesthetics.

Emilia Eräpolku is a Doctoral Candidate in the International Business unit in Aalto University School of Business, with interest in the energy transition and transformation processes for sustainability in multinational enterprises and international business.

Dina Myllymäki is a doctoral candidate at the University of Vaasa and a visiting researcher at Aalto University School of Business interested in people management processes and digital technologies.

Riku Reunamäki finds that studying at Aalto is an excellent preparation for a future academic career.  IB unit is a tight-knit group with very low hierarchy and a collegial atmosphere. Reunamäki's research concerns how management ideas travel globally and are translated and legitimized as practices locally, with a particular focus on employees who translate the ideas in their daily work. In Riku's dissertation, he explores how the global "agile" management fashion is translated at the largest financial group in Finland. Reunamäki performed ethnographic observations during times of social distancing and remote work, which was methodologically interesting.