Meet the team

This team of curious scholars focuses on three core areas. Firstly, project PI Frank Martela specializes in meaningfulness, human motivation, and empowering organizations through decentralization. He holds two Ph.D.'s and his work has been published in prestigious journals and featured in various media outlets. Secondly, Eero Vaara, a Professor at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, explores strategic and institutional change, emphasizing communication's role in constructing organizational reality. He has held editorial roles and leadership positions in international associations. Thirdly, Dr. Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä, an impact-driven scholar, blends disciplines to contribute to entrepreneurship, organization science, and international business. He has published in esteemed journals and engages with wider audiences through media coverage. Mia Leppälä, a Doctoral Candidate, focuses on open strategy and digital communication's influence on modern organizing, bridging technology and organizational structure. Together, this team advances research on meaningfulness, organizational change, and digital communication's impact.

Individual BIOs below

Frank Martela, Principal Investigator
Frank Martela, PhD, is a university lecturer at Aalto University, specialised in meaningfulness, human motivation and how organizations and institutions can unleash human potential through decentralisation and empowerment. He has two Ph.D.’s from organizational research (2012 Aalto University) and practical philosophy (2019 University of Helsinki). His scientific publications have appeared in journals such as Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Journal of Personality, Nature Human Behaviour, Southern Journal of Philosophy, and Metaphilosophy. He has spoken at universities on five continents including Harvard and Stanford, written for Scientific American Mind, and Harvard Business Review, and been interviewed by New York Times, Fox News, Le Monde, New Scientist, and Discover Magazine, among other. His book A Wonderful Life – Insights on Finding a Meaningful Experience (HarperCollins 2020) has been translated to 29 languages including French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian.

Eero Vaara

Eero Vaara is Professor in Organisations and Impact at Saïd Business School at University of Oxford. He also serves as Visiting Distinguished Professor at Aalto University. His research focuses on strategic and institutional change. This includes strategy process and practice research, studies of radical change such as mergers and acquisitions, work on institutional change and legitimation, and research on multinational corporations, nationalism and globalization. What cuts across these research interests is an attempt to better understand how communication, discourses and narratives are used in and around organisations and how they construct organisational reality. He has served in editorial roles (e.g., Associate Editor in Academy of Management Journal) and in leadership positions in international societies and associations (e.g., Chair of European Group for Organizational Studies, member of the Board of Governors in Academy of Management, and board member in Nordic Academy of Management, European Institute of Advanced Studies in Management, and Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research). He is an Academy of Management Fellow and a lifetime member in the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.

Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä
Dr. Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä is an impact-driven scholar, who has mixed a wide range of disciplines and educational approaches in his work. The co-creative approach in his projects has enabled immediate practical impact, with scientific contributions to the fields such as entrepreneurship, organization science,  international business, HRM and future studies. Regarding the academic outlets, Jukka-Pekka has published in top-tier journals including Academy of Management Discoveries, Journal of World Business, Journal of Strategic Information Systems and  Environment and Planning A. The communication to the wider public includes regular keynotes and popular media writing as a columnist in the Finnish national YLE news and international media coverage in Financial Times. He has been an assistant professor of entrepreneurship in Universidad de los Andes, Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Fellow (2017-2020) and current (non-paid) affiliations include visiting scholar positions in Harvard University and Stanford University, a Newton Fellowship of the Royal Society (UK) and British Academy.

Mia Leppälä

Mia is a Doctoral Candidate at Aalto University School of Business, currently finalizing her PhD. Additionally, she holds research positions at both the Aalto University School of Science and the University of Helsinki. Through these roles, she is actively involved in groundbreaking research, delving into open strategy, as well as the intricate influence of digital communication tools on modern organizing. Working at the intersection of emerging communication technologies and organizational communication, Mia's research primarily revolves around digital communication tools and the evolving ways of working and organizing in contemporary organizations. Her work is characterized by an in-depth understanding of the interplay between technology and organizational structure, driven by a passion for elucidating the complexities of organizational communication in a digital age.