In Finland three new universities were formed in January 2010 as a consequence of a merger. This paper reports the findings of a study of these mergers, drawing out implications for the role of management. The data consist of semi-structured interviews with academics. Previous studies (e.g. Kyvik 2002) showed that university mergers are challenging processes and that the consolidation of new organisational and institutional cultures as well as management styles of the merging universities play a crucial role; academic managers need to foster new organisational cultures and form a vision of the merged institution that retains the strengths of the merging universities whilst responding to external constraints. The study’s research interviewees stressed the key role of management in forming a new culture but felt that quite often a merger was not transparently promoted. Decisions were rather made by a small group of people instead of including the whole academic community to a merger process. Therefore, in order to create functional ‘we spirit’ to a merged university managers need to promote transparent and collective decision making. Reference Kyvik, S. (2004). Structural changes in higher education systems in Western Europe. Higher Education in Europe 29 (3), 393–409.