Organisational knowledge network

Abstract

This chapter focuses on organisations working in the interstices between Finland and the European Union. We consider these organisations as actors, studying them through the individuals who represent them. We study actors' relationships and the activities their work includes with the aid of the knowledge broker literature. The analysis draws on three types of data: quantitative network data, interviews, and ethnographic observational data. We show that these actors hold key positions in Finnish domestic higher education policymaking, and that they are well connected, both with each other and their European counterparts. Their daily work consists of both national and European policymaking, and their work is very knowledge-intensive. We find that these actors operate as brokers of knowledge between the local, national, and European levels of higher education policymaking. We conclude that these organisations, through the individuals representing them, can be collectively described as a knowledge network that creates, transforms, uses, and disseminates knowledge to shape higher education policies.