Ilkka Ojansivu

Dr. Ilkka Ojansivu is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Department of Marketing, Management, and International Business at Oulu Business School, University of Oulu, Finland. He earned his D.Sc. (Econ. & Bus.Adm.) in Marketing from Oulu Business School in December 2014 and was awarded an Adjunct Professorship in Marketing, with a focus on business relationships and business networks, at the University of Oulu in May 2023. Since completing his doctorate, Ojansivu has spent much of his career abroad, particularly in Australia, collaborating with international scholars and organizations.

Ojansivu’s research focuses on business-to-business (B2B) marketing, specifically in three key areas:

1. Business relationships and business networks
2. Service-intensive B2B projects
3. Understanding exchange, agency, and change in inter-organizational settings

A central theme across these research areas is sustainability, responsibility, and the green transition. Additionally, Ojansivu has a strong interest in marketing education, particularly in bridging the theory-practice gap. His work incorporates perspectives from interaction processes, social norms, value creation, institutionalization, legitimation, temporary organizing, institutional work, boundaries, embeddedness, and ontology. Through this multidisciplinary approach, his research advances the understanding of marketing and management as complex social phenomena that cross disciplinary boundaries.

Ojansivu’s work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals such as Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, International Journal of Project Management, and Scandinavian Journal of Management.

He serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, as a Managing Guest Editor for the upcoming Industrial Marketing Management Special Issue, Governing Business Relationships for Sustainable Futures, and as an Editor for the upcoming Routledge book, B2B Marketing and Sustainability: The Human Side of Business Relationships.

Ojansivu is the Head of International Master’s Programme in Sustainable Marketing at the Oulu Business School.