This paper focuses on academic ‘logics of action’ underpinning collaborative Joint Master programmes in Europe. These programmes are mainly animated by ‘grassroots’ efforts of individual academics, whose vision for a collaborative cross-national provision in their respective fields, and their network capital, underpin the programme. However, Joint Masters imply degrees of formalisation and institutionalisation that go beyond traditional individual collaboration, or institutional schemes of temporary student exchanges based on recognition and credit transfer procedures. Joint Masters have been championed by European agencies as vehicles for bringing closer together Higher Education systems, institutions, and practices at the European level, while they supposedly increase their visibility and branding. I approach these joint study programmes through the perspective of incentivised cross-national collaboration with the aim to examine the academic motives and underlying forces that support these complex cooperative arrangements. By engaging in incentivised collaborative study programmes, are academics simply exhibiting an instrumentality that serves externally defined agendas and priorities? What are the contexts of significance that influence their actions? How collaborative rationales are articulated, and may, or may not, evolve within policy and institutional frameworks, seeking to have an impact on collaborative behaviours in higher education, will be at the heart of this presentation.