What is going on in the international business environment?
Geopolitical turbulence following Russia’s war against Ukraine has made the international business environment more volatile and elevated security into a central concern alongside economic, environmental, and social sustainability.
Finnish firms face conflicting pressures, as security risks are considered immediate while sustainability impacts unfold more slowly. This creates a need for new research on how firms can manage sustainability under geopolitical uncertainty.
– Dr. Eini Haaja, Pan-European Institute, TSE
MANU project
The MANU research project explores Finnish firms’ sustainability management amidst geopolitical turbulence. In particular, MANU asks:
- How is sustainability management characterised and challenged in geopolitical turbulence?
- How resilient are firms in different operational time spans in the face of such turbulence?
- How can firms advance their sustainability through resilience against possibly increasing geopolitical turbulence?
The empirical research will be conducted through three case studies exploring different time spans towards sustainability in international business. The short-term case focuses on Finnish firms’ resilience to hybrid threats, which may affect different dimensions of sustainability. The medium-term case examines Finnish firms’ de-internationalisation and re-internationalisation activities, illustrating resilience in action as well as complex sustainability trade-offs. The long-term case analyses the resilience and sustainability dynamics associated with intensifying natural resource extraction in Finland.
The Principal Investigator of the project is Research Manager, D.Sc. (Econ) Eini Haaja from the Pan-European Institute, Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku. The research group comprises M.Sc. (Econ) Matti Karinen, M.A. Hanna Mäkinen, M.Sc. (Econ) Kari Pylkkönen, and D.Sc. (Econ) Anna Karhu.
Fresh academic insights to support Finnish businesses
The MANU project seeks to renew the understanding of sustainability and resilience in business studies by updating existing concepts to fit today’s turbulent international business environment. Besides the high-quality academic outputs, the research group strives to provide concrete managerial recommendations to the use of Finnish firms, supporting also the decision-making of other actors, such as different associations and policy makers.
Eini Haaja’s research group received a €200.000 grant from the Foundation for Economic Education for conducting the three-year MANU project. The grant was awarded in the foundation’s focus area Business renewal.
Feel free to get in touch – the group is open to all collaboration ideas, envisioning continued research and expanded impact in the future.