Internationalising a Multi-disciplinary PhD program offered by the University of Eastern Finland: Strategies and Approaches

Abstract

Given the interrelated and interdependencies of countries, business organizations including higher education have taken the advantage to extend their products and services across borders. Higher education, for instance, is one aspect that has benefited from the international cooperation and trade liberalization. However, many of the higher institutions that have extended their service to foreign countries fail to make an impact due to the poor managerial and internationalisation strategies. For such a reason, this thesis has analysed and proposed internationalization strategies and approaches for a multidisciplinary PhD program (IMPDET) from the University of Eastern Finland.

The proposition of the internationalisation strategies was based on the International market assessment opportunity framework that has widely been used in international business. Hence, this framework encapsulates with several other fine-grained international business strategies in every stage. Network and waterfall models were proposed for the IMPDET program in terms of its entry into developing economies.

The proposition of the internationalisation strategies was partly based on data collected from the selection of students and managements of the IMPDET program. Through a mixed research method analysis, the internal abilities and suitability of the IMPDET program was ascertained.

The investigation revealed that the IMPDET program has the internal ability, such as the required resources, to internationalise its operations in the foreign country. Additionally, this thesis found that the IMPDET program is suitable for meeting the challenges of the emerging economies, as this forms part of the key objectives of IMPDET to extend its operations to the developing economies.