Executive Education as Strategy Practice: Lessons from History and Prospects for the Future

The aim of this research project is to enhance our understanding about the development of Finnish executive education. In small societies, like Finland, entire business management generations have been and are shaped through executive education and training programs. Hence, the impact of executive education on the structural evolution of business and society is potentially enormous. That said, the industry itself has rarely been the object of academic research. In this project, we foreground the field. We view executive education through three different roles: a gate to national business elite, a tool for implementing organizational change, and a driver of managerial effectiveness and societal impact. Our research materials are archival sources, collected mainly from the archives of executive education organizations, which enable a first-hand view to the past educational programs.