[gradu] Kauppakorkeakoulu / BIZ

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  • “Please Wait Patiently”: When Bureaucratic Waiting Becomes the Service
    (2025-10-24) Kalashnyk, Yevhenii
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    Waiting for citizenship is not just a delay but an experience influenced by uncertainty and limited information. This thesis examines how Finnish citizenship applicants navigate bureaucratic waiting through qualitative interviews and observations of online communities. It focuses on how individuals manage uncertainty, search for updates, cope with emotional strain, and maintain agency in a high-stakes service context. The study draws on public administration and service research to show how waiting becomes a lived and strategic part of the citizenship process. Five response strategies are identified: Enduring, Connecting, Investigating, Escalating, and Disengaging. These themes reflect how applicants co-create value (and sometimes co-destruction) through peer support and advocacy while also showing the limits of co-creation under extreme power imbalances. The findings revel tensions between consumer behaviour literature, which often assumes short and voluntary waiting, and real-world bureaucratic delays that put people’s lives on hold. This thesis contributes theoretical insights into value co-creation in public services and has practical implications for making bureaucratic waiting more humane. The thesis argues that treating applicants as partners and providing transparency and support can transform waiting from a period of despondency into a more managed service experience.
  • Managing Hype for Sustainability: Exploring Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies in Organizational Contexts
    (2025-10-05) Pohto, Laura
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    While hype is widely studied, the management of its implications remains an emerging domain. Even less is known about how organizations manage hype at the firm level despite its recurring presence, especially in sustainability contexts. In these settings, the implications of hype are inherently complex: some argue that it can advance certain climate objectives while others suggest that it can hinder broader sustainability. Managing these adverse sustainability implications is therefore timely yet underrepresented in the literature. This study focuses on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies in Finland, where hype is particularly pronounced. Drawing on an abductive qualitative design, this study examines how organizations respond to CDR technology hype, how it may shape sustainability commitments, and potential strategies to manage it. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with six industry practitioners and analyzed using a Gioia-guided thematic method. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that organizations respond to CDR hype reflexively through various sensemaking mechanisms and that existing organizational practices function as informal hype management practices at the firm level. Accordingly, hype was rarely reported by the practitioners to explicitly shape decision-making or sustainability commitments, reflecting selective engagement to this phenomenon. Nonetheless, the potential implications of hype are found to be nuanced as its strategic influences may subtly emerge over time. This study also finds that, at a practical level, hype management is viewed as instrumental for sustainability even though current practices remain broadly detached from it. In this context, while organizations systematically evaluate the sustainability aspects of CDR technologies, these considerations rarely extend to the hype surrounding these methods. This suggests that the potentially adverse implications of hype for sustainability remain largely overlooked in practice. The findings of this study provide insights for managers to further develop hype management at the practical level and to integrate strong sustainability into these considerations. While substantial further research is needed to test the patterns observed in this study, these contributions nonetheless point to the promising role of strengthened hype management in the pursuit of sustainability.
  • Crafting caring leaders: A journey through a values-based leadership training program
    (2025-10-12) Riihimäki, Petra
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    Leadership is a widely studied and continually evolving phenomenon. Yet, a central challenge remains: how do abstract leadership ideals such as “caring leadership” travel into practice? Worldwide, organizations devote around 60 billion USD each year to leadership development initiatives, yet the transfer of learning into everyday work practice often remains limited (Geerts, 2024). This study seeks to address this research gap by exploring how the ideals of caring leadership are translated into practice at large postal and logistics company. The theoretical framework of this study is grounded in values-based leadership theories, caring leadership theory, and perspectives on leader and leadership development. This study employed a qualitative approach, and the empirical data was collected through seven semi-structured interviews with production managers who participated in the Caring Leader training program between 2023 and 2025 and whose managerial experience ranged from a few years to over twenty years. The interview data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings of this study show that managers interpreted caring leadership as a values-based approach that combines human-centred orientation, authenticity, fairness, genuine care, emotional presence, and practical support. The impact of the training program on managers’ individual leadership development was twofold: for less experienced managers, it fostered self-reflection and increased awareness, whereas for more seasoned managers, it primarily served as a validation of their existing values and practices. Based on the interviews, caring leadership ideals travel into practice through managers’ interpretation and enactment, shaped by both individual experience and organizational context. Individual experiences and organizational context either enabled or hindered the translation of caring leadership ideals into practice. Managers found that applying caring leadership in practice was shaped both by challenges, such as entrenched top-down norms, heavy workloads, and limited resources, and by enabling factors, including organizational support and a broader shift toward human-centred leadership within the company. The study highlights how leadership ideals are translated into practice through the interplay of individual experiences and organizational context.
  • ESG Compatibility in Mergers and Acquisitions – An Analysis of Short-Term Market Reactions and Medium-Term Operational Performance
    (2025-10-08) Eronen, Eero
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    This thesis tests whether ESG compatibility between acquirer and target, measured as their pre-deal ESG score gap, affects M&A outcomes. Using 91 completed deals, I test two outcomes: the announcement reaction (CAR over −5 to +5 days) and post-merger operating performance (ΔROA in the first full year). After controlling for deal size, pay-ment method, cross-border status, and industry overlap, ESG compatibility does not ex-plain announcement returns, but it does relate to operating results as greater misalign-ment predicts lower ΔROA. A four-point gap (about the interquartile range) reduces first-year ΔROA by roughly 0.20 percentage points. Compatibility matters for integration, but not for the initial market reaction.
  • Why does culture matter? Examining Metso’s organizational culture development through Culture Ambassadors
    (2025-10-18) Pakkanen, Elle
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    This master’s thesis explores employees’ experiences as Culture Ambassadors within a global industrial company. It explores the program’s effects at both individual and organizational levels. The study examines how participation in the program influences employees’ work practices, professional identity, and job crafting, and most importantly, how the program contributes to the development of the organizational culture. The research was conducted as a qualitative study through interviews with Culture Ambassadors at Metso Corporation. At the individual level, the findings highlight shifts in behaviour, leadership style, and ways of working, as participants integrated cultural themes into their daily practices. Many described the program as fostering greater awareness of collaboration, inclusion, and engagement, which in turn influenced how they led their teams and did their work tasks. The role of job crafting emerged, as Ambassadors adapted and reshaped aspects of their work in alignment with the values promoted through the program. At the organizational level, the research identifies both opportunities and challenges. On one hand, the program helped to strengthen cross-functional collaboration, address lingering cultural divisions that emerged after the merger, and enhance psychological safety. On the other hand, limitations included varying levels of recognition for Ambassadors’ efforts and the difficulty of sustaining the program’s influence beyond its official duration. Overall, the findings suggest that initiatives such as the Culture Ambassador program can play a valuable role in shaping organizational culture when they are embedded in structures that support inclusion, openness, and employee engagement. By enabling employees to internalize cultural values and act as role models, the program contributes to both individual growth and collective cultural development.
  • The role of supervisors in workplace conflict resolution - Experiences of supervisors in Finnish organizations
    (2025-10-26) Koskenniemi, Anna
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    Conflicts are a natural and unavoidable part of working life. The role of supervisors in workplace conflict resolution has increased, but their role, especially from their own perspective, has gained only moderate attention. This thesis addresses this research gap by examining how supervisors in Finnish organizations themselves perceive workplace conflicts. The research is a qualitative study based on seven semi-structured interviews of supervisors working for Finnish organizations. The interview data are analyzed with the reflexive thematic analysis method (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2019). The results are discussed through a theoretical lens in the light of four different approaches of managing problems inside organizations introduced by Currie et al. (2017) as well as the classification of workplace conflicts to task conflicts, process conflicts and personal conflicts by Jehn (1997, 2008). The results of this thesis provide the following contributions: 1. In contrast to the strong role of conflict management systems in managerial literature, Finnish organizations do not typically have systematic approaches to conflict management. 2. Finnish organizations encourage informal management of conflict and rely on the strong role of supervisors in solving workplace conflicts, which is in line with previous literature. 3. Finnish supervisors tend to choose their approach to workplace conflicts based on the type of the conflict. Task conflicts and process conflicts are usually resolved independently or with the support of higher management or colleagues, while personal conflicts are often taken to human resources department. This is a new opening in managerial research, as the effects of a conflict type on the approach chosen to workplace conflict resolution has not been studied before. The findings of this study can be utilized in the planning of organizational approaches to conflict resolution as well as in the training and development of supervisors.
  • Rethinking creativity: UX designers’ perspectives in an AI-driven world - A qualitative study on user experience designers’ perception of creativity in the era of generative artificial intelligence
    (2025-10-07) Nguyen, Huong
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    Creativity has been a complex phenomenon evolving throughout the history of creativity research with little theoretical consensus on how creativity can be defined. The recent rise in adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) into creative activities have been considered a paradigm shift for creativity research, inviting the need to revisit the definition of creativity to accommodate this change. This study contributes to this discussion with insights about how creativity in the age of AI is perceived in the field of user experience (UX) design, drawing from interviews with eleven UX designers based in Finland, coming from diverse cultural backgrounds and levels of field experience. The key findings highlighted that while generative AI has changed the contexts of how creativity happens, the essence of creativity in the age of AI remains the same as before AI usage was common, hence, no redefinition of creativity is needed. The perception of creativity is bounded by not one but multiple types of contexts, where AI acts as part of these contexts rather than a change factor to what defines creativity. Creativity in the field of UX design in particular has been perceived to be essentially about a mindset of challenging the norms while adapting to constraints. Practical implications were provided regarding how UX designers, organisations, and design education can nurture creativity in the AI-driven future of design work.
  • Cracks in the Glass? Exploring how Brand Enthusiasts Experience the Rebranding of Iittala
    (2025-10-24) Rögård, Sofia
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    The existing literature on heritage brands emphasises authenticity, continuity and the meaningful integration of heritage, as well as the strategic advantages these elements can offer in fostering customer engagement. Also, previous research identifies a core paradox that heritage brands often encounter. Namely, how to balance between the brand’s established history while still pursuing relevance that the changing markets demand. However, prior research provides limited understanding on how loyal consumers for whom the heritage brand is also a vast part of identity, adapt to major brand transformations once they are implemented. This thesis directly addresses that gap by exploring how brand enthusiasts adapt to and navigate brand makeovers. The context of this thesis is the rebranding of Finnish glass manufacturer Iittala in 2024. This thesis follows a qualitative, phenomenological approach. Ten semi-structured in-depth interviews with Iittala enthusiasts from diverse age and professional backgrounds were conducted and accompanied by netnographical observations of online discussions to gain comprehensive understanding of the adaptation and navigation process. The findings reveal three distinct adaptation strategies that follow Arsel and Thompson (2011) framework and are shaped by emotional and cultural attachments and field-dependent cultural capital: (1) aesthetic discrimination, where expertise defends authenticity, (2) symbolic demarcation, where enthusiasts draw cultural and national boundaries to protect identity and (3) proclaimed consumer sovereignty, where pragmatic consumers perceive change as inevitable and necessary. The study extends Arsel and Thompson’s (2011) framework to heritage rebranding context, integrates national identity into consumer adaptation and frames authenticity as socially negotiated and emotionally defended construct. The thesis further offers empirical support for heritage-sensitive design evolution. Managerially, it highlights the need for sufficient communication and segmentation strategies that account for the loyal clientele’s cultural capital and emotional investments.
  • Exploring consumer responses to the commodification of second-hand fashion
    (2025-10-20) Jääskeläinen, Ilona
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    The second-hand fashion market has grown remarkably in recent years, providing a considerable alternative to the fast fashion industry. Second-hand fashion has transformed from a marginal from of consumption, driven by affordability and sustainability, to an increasingly mainstream state, where its role in promoting sustainable consumption has become increasingly complex. This thesis aims to understand how consumers respond to the commodification of second-hand fashion, drawing from literature on sustainable consumption, second-hand fashion consumption, and commodification. The research is qualitative and phenomenological, focusing on ten semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Finnish second-hand fashion consumers. Netnography on Finnish Reddit threads acts as complementary data. The findings reveal that the commodified second-hand fashion market is characterized by four paradoxes related to popularity, price, sustainability, and authenticity. When responding to commodification, consumers navigate through these paradoxes by utilising four strategies: distancing and reflecting, repairing and upcycling, switching channels and exploring, and adjusting and embracing. The commodified second-hand market thus introduces new tensions that consumers either resist, adapt to, or even embrace. Overall, the thesis finds that commodification creates ambiguous responses in consumers. It may simultaneously dilute underlying sustainable values behind second-hand fashion while empowering consumers to navigate different identities and preferences through their second-hand consumption. The findings add to the literature on second-hand fashion, commodification, and sustainable consumption, and carry implications for managers and policymakers to promote more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable forms of fashion consumption.
  • Barriers to Effective Corporate Foresight: An Analysis of Strategic Decision-Making Through the Attention-Based View (ABV) Framework
    (2025-10-20) Juola, Cristina
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    This study investigates how structural, contextual, and cognitive factors in-fluence the attention allocation of decision-makers and, consequently, the effec-tive implementation of corporate foresight in strategic decision-making. Build-ing on a comprehensive literature review, the research integrates insights from corporate foresight scholarship, Ocasio’s Attention-Based View (ABV) theory, and organizational and cognitive biases to frame the analysis. Empirical data were collected through four in-depth interviews with strategi-cally selected participants, followed by thematic analysis that identified five key themes affecting foresight use. These findings were then interpreted through the ABV framework, highlighting the complex interplay between external industry dynamics, internal organizational culture, embedded processes, and cognitive biases. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of why organizations may struggle to leverage foresight effectively and offers practical recommendations for enhancing its integration into decision-making practices.
  • Risk-Return Tradeoff in Liquidity Farming
    (2025-10-15) Kymäläinen, Juho
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    This thesis investigates the risk-return profile of liquidity farming within decen-tralized finance (DeFi) applications and compares its risk-adjusted returns to those of major cryptocurrencies and traditional investments (i.e., equities and fixed income). Liquidity farming - where investors provide crypto asset pairs to decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in return for yield – has emerged as a novel investment class. It can be considered a form of crypto lending in return for fees (interest) and is therefore susceptible to credit risk. Using time-series analysis, this study evaluates 15 liquidity pools across leading platforms between 2022 and 2025. The results show that while many liquidity pools have lower returns than sim-ple buy-and-hold strategies, they often produce superior risk-adjusted returns than benchmarks when measured with traditional metrics such as the Sharpe ratio. Mixed pools deliver the best risk-return profiles, having better risk adjusted returns than both volatile and stablecoin pools. Stablecoin pools have also con-sistently higher returns than traditional fixed-income instruments in risk-adjusted terms, resembling crypto money-market funds. Many liquidity pools exhibit positive alpha. Importantly, market betas are near zero and occasionally negative, suggesting that DeFi returns are largely idiosyncratic and driven by fee income rather than systematic exposure to the cryptocurrency market or broad-er financial volatility (VIX) during this short observation period. The findings align with prior research that reported high headline yields may be deceptive. By explicitly incorporating impermanent loss and token price dy-namics, this study shows that reported APYs are poor proxies for realized re-turns. The study highlights that DeFi investments are subject to hidden risks not captured by conventional risk-return ratios, including impermanent loss, smart contract vulnerabilities, stablecoin depegging, and governance and regulatory uncertainties. These require investor diligence and ongoing monitoring. This research contributes to the growing academic literature on liquidity farming and lays a foundation for future studies on DeFi investing.
  • The effect of corporate social responsibility on information asymmetry
    (2025-10-20) Yan, Hao
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    In this thesis, I investigate the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance scores on information asymmetry for U.S. companies between years 2007-2020. Using ESG data from Refinitiv ESG and MSCI ESG ratings as well as three information asymmetry measures, I run fixed-effects regressions to analyse the relationship. Previous studies point towards a negative relationship. Given documented divergences among ESG ratings data, my analysis will provide additional evidence on whether the relationship holds with a novel set of measures. I find that CSR performance is negatively associated with information asymmetry in general after controlling for different firm characteristics. The results are robust across different model specifications.
  • Risk-adjusted performance measurement in banking group
    (2025-10-13) Tuominen, Aaro
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    Risk-adjusted performance measurement (RAPM) in banking is often presented as a technical solution, yet its usefulness hinges on how it is embedded in organizational practice. This single-case study examines RAPM in OP Financial Group, Finland’s largest cooperative banking group, focusing on how interest-rate and liquidity risks are incorporated into profitability assessment and how metrics travel from models to steering. The research adopts a qualitative, embedded case design and develops explanation through iterative inductive analysis. Evidence consists of eleven semi-structured interviews across central functions and member banks. Four aggregate dimensions structure the findings: RAPM logic and application, steering and coordination, organizational model influence, and development needs with observed outcomes. RAPM processes serve as the Group’s anchor for profitability and capital allocation, but practical usefulness is conditional on three mutually reinforcing mechanisms: i) package alignment, meaning stable definitions, transparent scope and consistent embedding in related processes, ii) risk (-adjusted performance) culture, including communication, training and incentives that sustain interpretability, iii) tool reflexivity, covering expert design and translation that keep models responsive to business realities. These mechanisms are moderated by cooperative context in OP Financial Group’s setting, where centralized methods and local autonomy legitimately reshape how RAPM signals are interpreted, producing trade-offs between comparability and contextual fit. This study contributes a mechanism-based account of when RAPM supports steering – via package alignment, a risk-aware culture, and tool reflexivity – and when it fragments it, alongside actionable implications for stabilizing definitions, strengthening transparency, and investing in learning loops.
  • Effectiveness of the CSRD in improving comparability in sustainability reporting – Insights from the first reporting year
    (2025-10-25) Laine, Milja
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    Sustainability reporting has become an established practice especially among large companies. Various reporting standards and frameworks aimed at ensuring high-quality sustainability reporting have emerged in response to the rising demand from investors and other stakeholders for credible and consistent sustainability disclosures. To ensure disclosures can be utilised effectively in decision-making, policymakers and standard setters have focused on enhancing comparability in sustainability reporting. However, achieving comparability has proven to be difficult and remains a critical challenge in sustainability reporting. This study focuses on the comparability challenge from the perspective of the EU’s recent Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) which entered into force in 2023. The CSRD aims to ensure that companies report comparable, reliable, and useful sustainability information. Although the directive aims to address shortcomings in sustainability reporting, its practical effectiveness in improving comparability remains uncertain. The first CSRD-compliant reports have been published in 2025, and this study examines how comparability is perceived after the first year of reporting. The objective of is to gain an understanding of how the CSRD impacts comparability, identify factors that might hinder it, and examine how comparability can be improved in the future. This research is a qualitative study and data is collected through semi-structured interviews with ESG professionals who work with CSRD-compliant sustainability reports. The interview data is analysed using thematic analysis. The findings of this study show that the CSRD has improved the structure and reliability of sustainability reports through the mandatory reporting standards and external assurance. Still, several challenges remain to achieving comparability. For example, subjectivity of double materiality assessments, complexity of reports, heavy reliance on narrative information and ongoing changes in the regulatory environment create barriers to comparability. The findings suggest that achieving the CSRD’s goal of enhanced comparability requires general and sector-specific guidance, machine-readable formats, better aligning disclosure requirements with user needs, and extending reporting mandate beyond the largest companies.
  • IT cost allocation in a multi-divisional manufacturing organization: A case study
    (2025-10-25) Pulli, Jenny
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    Cost allocations play a key role in management accounting, and well-designed allocation systems support managerial decision-making, performance evaluation, and resource optimization. However, large manufacturing organizations often struggle with allocating the cost of shared services, particularly the IT function, as these costs have expanded and become increasingly complex in a more digitalized business environment. Consequently, the chosen allocation principles have an increasingly significant impact on the profitability of individual business divisions. Academic literature on IT cost allocation remains limited. Existing studies emphasize that IT expenditures have shifted toward a more variable cost structure, driven by the rise of cloud computing. Traditional allocation models, developed for more static IT environments, tend to inadequately represent the dynamics of modern IT cost structures. Moreover, allocating IT costs continue to pose challenges due to the need to bridge highly technical service metrics with financial accounting principles. However, studies that provide guidance to cost allocations have focused on enhancing transparency and perceived fairness rather than solely on technical accuracy. The objective of this study is to assess the characteristics that define an effective IT cost allocation model for the case company by proposing a conceptual framework. In addition to examining cost allocation characteristics in the specific context, this study increases understanding more generally on shared service and IT cost allocations. Data and evidence are gathered through internal and external interviews. The findings suggest that transparency emerged as a key determinant of model success, while simplicity was valued for enhancing understandability. However, excessive simplification may compromise fairness and controllability. Therefore, it is essential to establish clear objectives for the allocation model, as these goals will guide the definition and prioritization of its key characteristics. Moreover, a key barrier identified in this case for adopting a more causal model is the lack of robust master data and supporting IT tools, which reinforces reliance on simplified allocation drivers.
  • Firm leveraging in state-owned enterprises due to covid-19 pandemic: Case listed firms in OECD countries
    (2025-10-24) Laakkonen, Jenni
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    This thesis investigates how publicly listed state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in OECD countries adjusted their leverage in response to the COVID-19 pandemic relative to comparable non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs). The firm-level panel covers three benchmark years—2017 (pre-pandemic), 2020 (crisis), and 2023 (recovery)—with the analysis centred on the latter two. Leverage is measured by the conventional debt-to-assets ratio (total debt divided by total assets). The empirical approach employs OLS regressions with firm-level controls and rich fixed effects, augmented by interaction specifications and post-estimation predictive margins/average marginal effects to quantify SOE–NSOE differentials. We find that SOEs are, on average, less leveraged than NSOEs across the sample, with the difference statistically significant. This lower leverage is not confined to majority-owned SOEs: even minority state ownership is associated with reduced leverage, although larger state stakes are, in normal times, linked to systematically lower leverage relative to non-state-owned counterparts. During the crisis, the SOE–NSOE leverage gap narrowed, and between 2017 and 2020 SOEs increased leverage more than NSOEs. Results exhibit substantial industry heterogeneity; moreover, the crisis-time increase in SOE leverage is concentrated in countries with stronger institutions, and firm size (proxied by total assets) is positively associated with the 2020 change in debt. The patterns are consistent with the role of policy interventions, including both implicit and explicit state guarantees, in facilitating SOE borrowing during the pandemic.
  • Socio-technical challenges in large language model (LLM) integration in expert work – A process engineering case study
    (2025-10-24) Saari, Eevi
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate substantial potential to enhance the productivity and efficiency of organisations. Organisations that invest in the technology are often under pressure to realise financial benefits quickly, yet limited model performance and user acceptance issues slow down adoption and delay productivity improvements, particularly in critical expert-driven environments. This thesis explores the challenges related to the implementation of large language models within a process engineering organisation and proposes practical recommendations to facilitate successful technology integration. The study employs a qualitative single-case study approach, applying thematic analysis through the lens of socio-technical systems theory. The findings categorise integration challenges into three main types, conceptualised as socio-technical gaps. Technology-task gaps manifest as inaccurate, irrelevant, or incomplete model outputs, as well as limitations in interpreting non-textual data, thereby constraining the model’s applicability in essential work tasks. Technology-actor gaps concern user interaction and acceptance challenges, such as distrust in the accuracy of the model’s outputs and difficulties in establishing consistent usage routines. Technology-structure gaps arise when organisational structures, strategies, or resources fail to adequately support the technology’s requirements, for example insufficient time allocation for system deployment, strategic challenges in knowledge base development, and shortcomings in user training and motivation. These misalignments between the technical and social components of the work system slow down the integration of LLMs and require strategic, system level approaches to optimise overall system performance.
  • Reviewing semi-structured legal documents with robotic process automation
    (2025-10-19) Lehtinen, Leo
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    This study investigated how rule-based automation, grounded in best practices of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), can be applied to free-text organisational rules in the review processes of the Finnish Patent and Registration Office (PRH). As a public agency, PRH is constrained by legislation that limits the use of AI for automatic decision-making. Moreover, although PRH provides templates for rules documents, it cannot mandate their use and must also accept free-text submissions. The study designed and tested an automation model that converts free-text rules into semi-structured data and then categorises them, based on previously approved documents, to support human reviewers. While the general model can be applied with minimal adaptation to different legal forms, it was tested on articles of association of limited liability companies. The findings showed that, despite their free-text format, most articles of association follow predictable patterns. The model demonstrated high accuracy, with its recommendations aligning with actual review decisions in 99.6 % of cases. Although only 10–15 % of documents could be fully approved automatically, approximately 40–45 % required manual review solely of the line of business, and about 80 % of individual articles could be approved without manual review. These results indicate that rule-based automation can improve efficiency and consistency by reducing repetitive manual tasks and allowing reviewers to focus on complex or exceptional cases. The study also highlights potential synergies between the automation model and artificial intelligence. AI-based solutions could replace the algorithms responsible for converting free-text documents into semi-structured format, improving adaptability and scalability, while the rule-based classification core would ensure explainability and legal compliance. Should legislation permit AI-based automatic decision making in Finnish public agencies, the model could either support or validate AI-generated outcomes. Overall, the findings demonstrate that rule-based automation offers immediate value while also laying the groundwork for future AI integration in legal and administrative processes.
  • Development of business intelligence strategy in SME
    (2025-10-19) Aaltonen, Saara
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    The objective of this study is to create a framework for the development of a business intelligence strategy for a small and medium sized enterprise by building on existing frameworks from previous research. The thesis is conducted using action research methodology. The research data were collected through interviews, workshops, and the review of the company's materials and data. The research data analysis was conducted using grounded theory, a method that is argued to be well integrated with action research. The main result of the research highlights the importance of aligning Business strategy, organizational strategy and technological strategy when developing a BI strategy. Previous research support this. The created framework was concluded to be found useful for the present research.
  • The predictive power of Altman Z-score (1983), Ohlson O-score, and Zmijewski X-score in forecasting bankruptcies of Finnish unlisted SMEs
    (2025-10-25) Ihalainen, Oskari
    School of Business | Master's thesis
    The object of this thesis is to find out if the Altman Z’’-score, the Ohlson O-score and the Zmijewski X-score can predict bankruptcies in a setting that has not been widely studied before. This thesis also answers to a question of which model performs the best. The tested companies are Finnish unlisted small and medium-sized enterprises, and the time-period is 2018-2022. This study has two groups. First group consists of 189 companies that went bankrupt during 2023. The second group consists of 817 companies that have not gone bankrupt. Financial statements for the needed time-period were downloaded from Orbis. The Z’’-score, the O-score and the X-score were calculated for each company. Depending on the scores, a company was classified as bankrupt or non-bankrupt. The predictive power of each model is the percentage of the model correctly classifying bankrupt companies as bankrupt and non-bankrupt companies as non-bankrupt. The accuracy is tested each year within the time-period. In this study, the X-score has the highest accuracy of classifying non-bankrupt companies correctly and the highest combined total accuracy. The O-score is the best in classifying bankrupt companies correctly. The Z’’-score is however found to be the best performing bankruptcy prediction model due to its all-around steady performance.