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Otakaari 1 grandhall. Photo: Esa Kapila
 

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Recent Submissions

Large Language Models in Accounting Practice: An Action Research Study on Adoption and Efficiency
(2025-05-14) Kuronen, Lukas
 School of Business | Master's thesis
This thesis explores the practical adoption and applicability of Large Language Model (LLM) tools within accounting work. Despite growing interest, empirical research on real-world use of LLMs in accounting remains scarce. This study addresses that gap by applying an Action Research approach a debt collection agency. The research is guided by three questions: (1) How can LLMs be utilized in accounting practice? (2) How can they enhance efficiency and ease workload? (3) What factors enable or hinder their adoption? Across three intervention cycles, participants engaged with LLM tools in various accounting tasks ranging from formula generation and text summarization to forecasting and scenario analysis. Data was collected via semi-structured interviews and a Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)-based surveys. The results suggest that while LLMs offer clear benefits in repetitive microtasks, broader use is shaped by prompting skills, task relevance, system integration, and organizational support. The study contributes early insights into LLM implementation in accounting and proposes a replicable model for future research.
Board Configurations and Firm Performance in North-American Healthcare: a Fuzzy-Set QCA Study
(2025-05-11) Sedov, Nikolai
 School of Business | Master's thesis
Abstract Corporate governance research on how board attributes affect firm performance remains inconsistent. Major frameworks, such as agency theory and stewardship theory, offer valid perspectives, but empirical research often yields contradicting or situational results when examining such factors as board size or succession dynamics – corporate governance has not been sufficiently researched as a complex system. Addressing this gap, this thesis applies a configurational perspective to examine whether distinct combinations of board characteristics are associated with high and low return on assets (ROA). Using fuzzy‑set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) on a hand‑collected panel of 60 North‑American healthcare firms (board data 2021; ROA 2022‑23), four governance conditions – board size, manager ratio, wealth delta, and succession factor – were calibrated and analysed. Two high‑performance configurations emerged: (1) a “diversity & oversight” path combining large boards, high non‑executive representation and strong equity incentives; and (2) an “agility” path with small, executive‑dominated boards but equally strong incentives, observed in a single large firm. Conversely, the absence of wealth‑linked pay alone was sufficient for low performance, demonstrating causal asymmetry. The findings suggest equifinality in board design in the healthcare industry – albeit equifinality remains a speculative suggestion – and reinforce the primacy of incentive alignment, thereby supporting agency and stewardship logics within a complexity‑theory framework. Practically, healthcare boards must focus on optimizing their equity‑based pay systems, and consider an oversight‑diverse configuration (larger boards with higher managerial representation). Additionally, boards may consider agility‑focused configuration (smaller boards, younger members, executive-focused).
Sustainability report readability: indicator of good ESG performance or strategic obfuscation?
(2025-05-26) Jämsä, Jenni
 School of Business | Master's thesis
This thesis examines the association between ESG performance and the reading ease of sustainability reporting. Sustainability reporting differs notably from financial reporting with for example a broader stakeholder perspective and its non-monetary nature. Sustainability reporting draws links to key theoretical perspectives, such as stakeholder, agency and legitimacy theories, providing motivations, challenges, and implications of sustainability reporting. The empirical part of this thesis focuses on publicly listed firms in the Nordics; Finland, Denmark and Sweden from 2019-2023. The key findings of regression analyses indicate a positive association with the ESG performance and the length of sustainability reporting. The results with the longer-term change variables indicate that longer-term changes matter more than the short-term. This emphasizes the long-term nature of sustainability matters which is highlighted by the prior literature as well. Additionally, firm earnings show a highly significant negative relationship with disclosure complexity and a positive association with the length variables, indicating that firms with better financial performance produce more readable and longer sustainability reports. Furthermore, the findings of this thesis provide support to prior literature, by documenting that even high-performing ESG countries continue to evolve their reporting practices, which offers benchmarks for the emerging ESG markets.
Alustatalouden ruokalähetin työoikeudellinen asema
(2025-05-22) Aittokallio, Leena
 School of Business | Master's thesis
Digitalisation creates new working models and new opportunities for companies to operate. With new technological solutions, a form of self-employment created by digital platforms, called platform work, has emerged. Labour law is based on the traditional employment relationship model. New forms of work challenge the application and interpretation of labour law. These new forms of work involve legally challenging aspects from both the perspective of the party assigning the work and the party doing the work. The aim of the research is to analyse the employment status of a food delivery worker in the platform economy under current law and in the context of legislative developments. The research focuses on the employment status of a food delivery worker and the changes brought by the platform work directive. The research is conducted from a labour law perspective. The primary methodology is legal dogmatics, supplemented by de lege ferenda analysis. There is still no specific legislation regarding platform work in Finland. Platform work performance is assessed based on the fulfilment of the characteristics of an employment relationship in the Employment Contracts Act. In situations open to interpretation, an overall consideration must be used. The Platform Work Directive approved in October 2024 aims to improve the working conditions of platform workers at the EU level. The main way to achieve this aim is Article 5 of the Directive, which contains a provision on the presumption of employment. When specific conditions are met, it must be presumed that the contractual relationship between the platform worker and the platform assigning work is an employment relationship. The Directive facilitates the determination of a food delivery worker's employment status. However, in situations open to interpretation, the determination will likely continue to entail evaluating whether all criteria of an employment relationship are fulfilled, and where necessary, an overall consideration will be used.
Managing Sustainability Strategically: Multiple Perspectives on the Available Value Proposition - Case Fiskars Group
(2025-05-05) Nurminiemi, Joel
 School of Business | Master's thesis
Corporate sustainability is without a doubt the buzzword of the management fashion of recent years. Something that has become a globally known recipe for answering the challenges posed by the mother nature is needlessly ambiguous, even fluffy in cases of greenwashing. Understanding its beginnings is more complex as it might first appear due to its multifaceted characteristics. The often-used trinity of themes – environmental, social and governance – is only one conceptualization and apt to increase the width and depth of the conceptual universe by default. Accepting the existence of a continuum of professional roles ranging from strategic to compliance and enabling this in practice has become a necessary milestone. Approaching the interrelatedness of sustainability and financial performance with a dubious mindset comes as no surprise. In fact, it is true that all activities under ‘ESG’ are not value-adding during a short-term inspection. The business case for sustainability is well-founded as the humankind is facing a behemoth of a mission. To succeed, the attention must turn towards actions within moderately sized milieus – the corporate context being a good starting point. The deeper analytical dimension emerges as one begins to evaluate behaviours of internal stakeholders or examines how they perceive different realities, prise those in their prioritisation, or gain a view behind the grand designs. Numbers may become weaponised, there may exist headwind, different tensions may begin to surface, resulting in debates. High-level theories, like sensemaking, bundle the invisible with the actions one can detect within firms. What is sensemaking, or similarly, what is sustainability? Framed philosophically, there are no right or wrong answers. Even though many believe to know the answer, at least to the latter questions, they do not really know. That does not mean they would be wrong; it is just that their understanding is finite. This qualitative single case study sets to find contextual answers to those two questions laid out above. The rich insights into how sustainability is seen, e.g., in design, research and development, manufacturing, the sustainability team and top management all provide a different narrative. The sustainability-oriented equity story represents the consolidated view. The sensemaking theory is involved to comprehend the processes and interactions between different organizational levels. Institutional theory, being the pressure and expectations, is placed on a pedestal with sensemaking as a tool taking place on multiple organizational bodies and sensegiving originating from two main actors, that are, the President and CEO as well as the Group ESG Strategy Team. They provide information, a legitimate mandate and call for action. They keep the topic present and their leadership is what nails the guidelines on how sustainability should be managed strategically.