University Internationalization Through Collaboration with Industry : The case of Linköping University internationalization with Brazil through collaboration with Saab

Sammanfattning: With increased globalization and change in the educational structure, university internationalization has increased with the aim to better serve the society and connect institutions. Collaborations between universities and businesses have also become more common due to globalization and the shift in educational structure to serve society not only on an academic level. However, as internationalization is mostly regarded as an activities’ based approach, apparently there has been no theoretical or empirically explored propositions about the possibility of university internationalization through collaboration with industry. Therefore, this thesis’ purpose is to identify the set of factors that differentiate a regular internationalization approach from the one through collaboration with industry and thereby showing the relationship between university internationalization and university-business collaboration. A qualitative and inductive research approach was used through adopting a single case study of Linköping University’s internationalization in Brazil through its collaboration with Saab as an industry, which was done through collecting data from semi-structured interviews. The empirical findings confirmed that university internationalization through collaboration with industry is possible. Consequently, a model was developed that identified the differences between the two approaches and concludes by showing how university internationalization and university-business collaboration are linked.