NEWSLETTER 3-17 FROM HANKEN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
Connecting with society Universities tackle societal challenges through academic research and through engaging in public debate. Beyond research and teaching, we take responsibility by working together with both public and private organizations to address these societal challenges. To further increase our interaction on the local arena, Hanken has hosted two new events in Vaasa, BAR and TEDx. Business and Research, or BAR for short, is a new concept bringing together companies and higher education institutions in Vaasa. The idea is to encourage academic research to support and bring about change within the local community through executive education. Hosting TEDx Vaasa has also given us the opportunity to welcome ten prominent speakers to our world of academia. Among these, we had Michael ”Monty” Widenius, behind MySQL, and Rune Westergård, founder of Citec and recurring guest lecturer in our master’s programme. The speakers covered
topics from leadership and entrepreneurship to analogue communication in a digital world. These events break down the silos between academia and practice and are in line with Hanken’s revised strategy, presented later in this issue. We are committed to continuing to further social responsibility and sustainability in our work. I am confident that these events will give us new perspectives and keep up a continuous dialogue. I look forward to hosting more of these events in the future!
S Ö R EN KO C K DEAN OF EXECUTIVE E D U C AT I O N A N D O P E R AT I O N S I N VA A S A
HANKEN TOPS NORDIC RESEARCH COMPARISONRANKING Hanken tops the Nordforsk research comparison in the field of business studies and economics within the share of highly cited publications, putting Hanken 70 % over the average and within the average citation rate (1,66) among 172 Nordic higher education institutions. This report describes research performance in a more nuanced way than many other international university rankings. - Citation distributions are typically skewed and some few publications tend to receive most of the citations. So it’s interesting to investigate contributions to highly cited papers, in addition to field normalised average scores, explains Library Director Tua Hindersson-Söderholm. According to the report, the scholar shows remarkable development with the main indicators. Though the total publication output of Hanken is low in absolute numbers, Hanken shows a steady rise. The explanation for this is that in a small university with a suitably limited focus, it is possible to achieve rapid change. - This is a result of our efforts to reward top publications and be able to increase both the productivity and the impact of our researchers, says Timo Korkeamäki, Dean of Research at Hanken.