Mission, vision and values

The mission of LUSEM is to offer innovative, integrated, and varied education and research of high international standard in collaboration with external partners. A general objective of the faculty is to be socially relevant, proactive, a forefront educational institution, and a positive force for progress. By equipping students with a competitive, multi-faceted academic breadth and an understanding of the world around them, promising future prospects are provided; something affirmed by many alumni who often pursue successful careers. Therefore, making a difference and being more than a business school are important components of LUSEM’s vision. A deeper description of LUSEM's mission, vision, and values is provided below.

Mission

LUSEM’s mission follows closely to the mission of the University. LUSEM is more than a business school. The School includes a broad range of academic fields that enable it to provide innovative, integrated, and varied education and research of a high international standard in collaboration with external partners. To succeed, LUSEM turns to its Scandinavian origins and international outlook to make significant contributions to a sustainable society and to a better world. Our mission captures LUSEM’s essence of being a broad, international business school, based in the Nordics, and with an aim to contribute to the advancement of society. This mission was refined in the Strategic Plan of 2022-2025 by more clearly emphasising that the School is well positioned within a broad University, which gives the School an advantage when it comes to interdisciplinary collaborations while we at the same time have a high degree of autonomy. This is also reflected in the School’s vision.

Vision

LUSEM is committed to high international standards embodied in the ideal of balanced excellence, which means a high quality of education, research and external engagement to understand, explain and improve our world and the human condition. Balanced excellence, meaning that research, teaching and external engagement need to balance, is very important for the School since it existential to ensure high international standards and to foster leaders of tomorrow. While recognizing the diversity of faculty, the aim of the School is that all faculty members should strive for balanced excellence. This does not indicate that all faculty members are to work with one third of each dimension, but rather that excellence in one area does not excuse negligence of others, for example successful research is no excuse for poor teaching.

LUSEM works towards its vision through keywords such as innovative, digital, and sustainable since a world with rapid, unforeseen, and transformative developments requires greater preparedness and organizational agility. This is the key dimensions of the University’s strategic platform for focusing, accelerating, structuring and inspiring development work within the University and the School.

These key ambitions permeate all prioritised areas: education in transition, foster strong research today and for the future, engagement with the society outside academia.

Values

LUSEM’s vision is an insignia of the vision of Lund University, which is stated as: “A world-class university that works to understand, explain and improve our world and the human condition”. Being part of an old and well-established University, the core values also tend to be shared throughout the organisation.

The School’s mission, vision and values are regularly reviewed. The most recent review took place in 2021, in connection with the development of LUSEM’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025. The review was undertaken with a set of working groups within LUSEM’s Management Team and the Senior Management Council. In addition, a series of “townhall meetings” were held during 2021, mostly carried out digitally. Many faculty, staff as well student representatives were engaged. The discussions also included representatives of the Senior Corporate Advisory Board. The review resulted in the conviction that LUSEM can improve its position even further by articulating our position, as a broad, societally engaged and research driven business school.

Internationalisation

Lund University has been international in its mission and outlook since it was founded. LUSEM is proud to build on this tradition and the School’s international profile is one of its key strengths and characteristics. Consequently, the School is international in many areas in terms of curriculum content, the backgrounds of students and faculty members, and the diversity of research collaborators.

The School’s strategy for internationalisation, hence, focuses on enhancing existing strengths, building new strengths in areas where this may be required, and further integrating value-adding international activities in order to obtain a strategic advantage.

Our agenda is to develop the culture and ambience of the School as a genuine international community. International recognition is a key factor in this strategy.

Internationalisation