International success for articles written on MBA theses from TUAS
Articles written in English, based on the theses of students in the Master of Business Administration programme, have been published in several international scientific journals.
In the photo Principal Lecturer, D.Sc. (Business Adm.) Keijo Varis (on the left) and PhD (Chemistry) Olatunde Jogunola (second from left) are holding two journals recently published in the US and Canada. Both journals feature articles written by Jogunola and Varis.
Victor Piedrafita Acin (second from right in the photo) is holding an article which he, Docent Kaisa Sorsa and Varis wrote on Piedrafita Acin's MBA thesis in a book to be published in England later this year. Jogunola and Piedrafita Acin have graduated from the MBA in Business Management programme at Turku University of Applied Sciences, and have been tutored by Varis.
The two articles by Jogunola and Varis discussed the internationalization of the education of Finnish universities and the quality of the international Master’s degree programmes as experienced by foreign students. The articles were published in the US and Canada in issue 18/6, 2018 of the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice (JHETP) and in issue 20/1, 2019 of the Journal of Management Policy and Practice (JMPP).
Usually the authors of the publications are either professors or associate professors from universities in the US or Canada.
“In addition to our article, the JHETP issue featured e.g. an article on the prerequisites of success for online MBA programmes by Assistant Professor of Management and MBA Program Director Jack Smothers from the University of Southern Indiana. An earlier issue of the JMPP included an article by Professor John C. Cavanaugh, who is the President and CEO of a Consortium of seventeen (17) Universities in Washington DC”, says Varis.
“Jogunola and I are very pleased with the fact that our article has been approved among such important and prestigious writers”, he adds.
In the article, which is based on his thesis, Jogunola was the first in Finland to evaluate the internationalization strategies and experienced quality of international education at some Finnish universities. The article was published about a week before the defence of a doctoral thesis of MBA Ville Sarpo on 14 December 2018, which discussed the evaluation of the internationalization strategy of the University of Jyväskylä.
It’s also noteworthy that doctoral researchers from South Africa have already referenced this article in the publication International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), August 2019. According to their statistical analyses, there is no connection between the higher education institution’s own paid advertising and the experienced quality of said institution. Thus, the reputation of higher education institutions in terms of quality must be built in another way than by paid advertising.
“We have already been able to disseminate the information in our article in Africa and it’s amazing how quickly the research results spread and have an impact around the world”, says Keijo Varis at the beginning of the autumn semester 2019.
”This is interesting. It is great to see the impact of one’s own work on a global scale! It’s not always easy in the field of management”, says Rector Vesa Taatila.
From a thesis to an article in an international publication
In his thesis MBA student, engineer Victor Piedrafita Acin evaluated the level of environmental reporting of the supply chain of Finnish, international industrial companies in the light of theories. The thesis was instructed by Principal Lecturer, Docent Kaisa Sorsa from Turku University of Applied Sciences.
The thesis was very high-standard and got the best possible grade. Rector and Professor Rabi N. Kar from Shyam Lal College within the University of Delhi, India, included it as a chapter in the book Responsible Business Professionals: A Strategic Perspective of the Global Challenges, which will be published in the end of 2019 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing Ltd.
Docent Kaisa Sorsa has cooperated with professors in Indian universities before. In addition, Professor Rabi N. Kar has earlier been the editor of several international publications on sustainable development, e.g. Emerging Dynamics of Sustainability in Multinational Enterprises (Edward Elgar, 2016) together with professors from US-based and European universities.
“We have now achieved an outstanding international reputation in the field of environmental management, thanks to Piedrafita Acin’s thorough thesis and Kaisa Sorsa’s excellent connections to India. In our article in the book to be published, we have evaluated environmental management and reporting at the international level of global companies equally with the other authors of the book. Of these, Rabi N. Kar is an internationally esteemed professor”, Varis says.
Varis says that what the theses and internationally renowned articles have in common is that they discuss evaluation and are based on the same evaluation theories, which Varis himself studied at the University of Tampere in 2012–2014.
The level of MBA students at Turku University of Applied Sciences has been exceptionally high. Good examples include PhD (Chemistry) Olatunde Jogunola from Nigeria and Åbo Akademi, and engineer Victor Piedrafita Acin, who is originally from Spain.
“Keijo has done excellent work with his MBA students. Together they have been able to publish demanding joint articles in several high-quality scientific journals in the past four years. This is Excellence in Action at its best”, says Rector and President Vesa Taatila from Turku University of Applied Sciences (on the right in the photo).
Apply to the MBA programme Master of Business Administration, Business Management (Master´s Degree Programme in Business Management) in the joint application of the autumn 4–18 September 2019 . The Business Management programme is a part of TUAS’ Master School.