Business Administration
This dissertation examines how digital technologies can support the integration of discipline-specific language in accounting and taxation. Across three essays, it analyzes the acquisition, application, and analysis of specialized terminology. Essay I investigates a wiki-based collaborative glossary in introductory accounting education and shows that it improves students' academic performance and engagement with accounting terminology, while also revealing challenges related to coordination and content reliability. Essay II uses dictionary-based text analysis to create a cross-country dataset on corporate environmental tax legislation and finds that such taxes are shaped more by institutional and political factors than by environmental risks. Essay III develops and applies a domain-specific large language model to qualitative corporate tax disclosures, demonstrating that specialized LLMs outperform general-purpose models and traditional text analysis methods. Overall, the dissertation shows that digital technologies can enhance the acquisition, application, and analysis of specialized language in accounting and taxation. It contributes to accounting education, tax policy research, and methodological debates on the use of natural language processing in discipline-specific contexts.
The Influence of Digital Transformation on well-being – analysis of life stages and business sectors
(2026)
The accelerating pace of digital transformation (DT) is profoundly reshaping the world of work, placing new demands on employees and affecting their well-being. As employee well-being is closely linked to engagement and performance, this PhD project investigates how organizations can engage employees during DT, with particular consideration of their well-being. The Self-Determination Theory (SDT) serves as the kernel theory in this research for understanding well-being, expanded to include physical health. Furthermore, both different working conditions and various life stages of employees are incorporated in order to capture the dynamic nature of well-being. However, promoting well-being requires a comprehensive understanding of its multifaceted effects, both positive and negative, on employees, a challenge further intensified by the ongoing DT. While many companies recognize the benefits of DT, they often struggle with its implementation and the associated impacts on the workforce. Maturity models are a common tool to provide guidance during DT by serving as frameworks for assessing and developing organizational capabilities. In practice, maturity models are often too strategic, inflexible, and insufficiently user-centered. Furthermore, social aspects such as employee well-being have so far been largely neglected. To close this gap, an adaptable human-centered maturity model focusing on well-being was designed and empirically validated within the framework of this cumulative dissertation consisting of six papers, following the Design Science Research (DSR) approach. The model uniquely integrates basic psychological needs, physical health, and life stage perspectives, dimensions largely absent in existing DT maturity models. Overall, this PhD project advances the human-centered discourse on well-being by providing a practice-oriented maturity model that supports organizations in identifying the effects of DT on well-being and deriving appropriate courses of action.
Digital transformation (DT) fundamentally reshapes organizational structures and work processes. Despite its strategic importance, up to 70% of DT initiatives fail, primarily due to insufficient consideration of human factors. This cumulative dissertation addresses this gap by developing and validating a human-centered Change Management Maturity Model that systematically integrates employee needs into digital transformation processes, with particular emphasis on the AI-driven third phase of DT.
Existing DT maturity models predominantly focus on technological, strategic, and organizational aspects while neglecting human-centered dimensions such as employee motivation, psychological well-being, and change readiness. Likewise, established change management frameworks tend to operate either at the organizational level (e.g., McKinsey 7S) or the individual level (e.g., ADKAR), without systematically integrating both perspectives. To address this limitation, this dissertation proposes a comprehensive maturity model comprising nine dimensions across three categories: Motivation & Leadership Behavior, Dealing with Change, and Well-being & Health.
The research follows an echeloned Design Science Research (eDSR) approach and is structured as a cumulative dissertation consisting of six research papers. The model is grounded in multiple kernel theories, including Self-Determination Theory, Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the Dynamic Capabilities Framework, and established change management models. Empirical validation was conducted in the skilled trades sector and across industries in the retail sector, demonstrating the model’s applicability across organizational contexts and its practical relevance for managing AI-driven transformation initiatives.
Entrepreneurship is vital in driving innovation, economic growth, and societal transformation. Due to its growing relevance, this dissertation examines the factors that motivate individuals to engage in entrepreneurial endeavors, grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and enriched by supplementary theoretical perspectives. The research combines qualitative and quantitative methods to explore how attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control interact with these diverse aspects. The first study identifies key influences on entrepreneurial intention through qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs, thereby revealing ten critical determinants. The second study expands upon these findings by employing a quantitative approach to validate these parameters through a survey among entrepreneurs in Germany. It demonstrates the central importance of economics-oriented education, materialistic values, and resilience while refining the theoretical assumptions of the TPB in entrepreneurial contexts. Lastly, the third study extends the analysis by comparing the personality traits of entrepreneurs and employees utilizing the OCEAN model. This research delineates substantial differences across all five traits, underscoring the psychological dimensions of entrepreneurial behavior. By amalgamating the three studies and their respective findings, this dissertation contributes to the theoretical understanding of entrepreneurship by enhancing the predictive validity of the TPB for research on entrepreneurship and highlighting differences in personality traits among entrepreneurs and employees. Through the integration of qualitative insights and quantitative validation, this dissertation provides a comprehensive and nuanced perspective on the complex nature of entrepreneurship.
Small business lending is significantly influenced by the interplay between the information institution types, the information models, and the due diligence process undertaken by financial institutions. While previous research has examined the impact of hard and soft information on credit availability, limited attention has been given to how different combinations of these information types and various financial institution types influence the quality of loan applications and the loan application success rates. Additionally, the role of due diligence in assessing small business loan applications and the specific signals lenders rely on for decision-making remain underexplored.
This study integrates insights from three research streams to provide a unique analysis of small business lending dynamics. First, based on primary data collected from 242 small firms in Ghana and considering different financial institutions, including non-banks, we examine the effect of three distinct combinations of hard and soft information on loan application success rates. Our findings challenge conventional wisdom, indicating that an increased emphasis on soft information does not necessarily enhance transparency or improve loan application success rates. Moreover, while small-sized banks positively influence credit availability, this effect does not extend to small-sized non-banks.
Second, leveraging signal theory, we analyze the due diligence process undertaken by financial institutions through qualitative insights from 24 loan officer interviews. We identify 11 key hard and soft signals that influence credit risk assessments, including key person risk, change in leadership risk, articulation of company value, adaptation to change, data accuracy, and completeness. These insights highlight the multifaceted nature of credit decision-making.
Increasingly decentralized collaboration drives the development of new creativity support systems (CSS) that offer virtual teams various means for communication, information exchange, and creative collaboration. As CSS aim to mitigate the limitations of virtual communication and collaboration, reason suggests that more functionalities yield better outcomes. Hence, a wide range of capabilities for interaction, knowledge sharing, or innovative collaboration processes is implemented into these CSS.
However, if CSS offer functionalities beyond the required level, they can become confusing to use, overload users, or cause feature fatigue. Previous research shows that having more options or functionalities does not always lead to better results, especially in the context of creativity, and suggests a curvilinear relationship between constraints and creativity. While the effects of constraints on creative collaboration have been studied in analogue settings before, their design and application to support creative collaboration in virtual contexts, remains under-researched.
This PhD thesis examines how constraints in CSS can be designed to foster creative collaboration and contribute to a better understanding of how limited functionalities and interactions during particular phases of creative collaboration can help individuals and teams access a CSS's instrumental potential and benefit from idea generation and exploration beyond routine performance, and encourage more radical forms of creativity. To support the evolution of knowledge about the theory and practice of CSS design, this research project follows a design science research (DSR) approach.
Given the profound changes in the demand for new innovative ways of developing and delivering services, the so-called “personal services” are responding to the digital challenge by using different approaches and at varying speed. Personal services are those services that can be found in sectors such as education, retail, hospitality (hotels, restaurants), craftmanship, art and entertainment. These are services that have been for so long designed around the idea that they only require “high-touch” personal encounters. However, due to the fact that the world today is becoming more digitalized and is heading towards what is known as a “digital revolution”, firms from this sector must look for new and alternative ways on how to adapt their business models, organizational structures, and service offerings, especially by taking advantage of the use and application of digital technologies. Thus, leading these firms to avoid what could be a long-term business collapse.
Despite the fact that it is true that certain companies within this industry such as Airbnb, VR-All-Art, or HelloFresh have managed to disrupt traditional business paradigms, even leading to building billion-dollar businesses, the reality is that personal services represent one of the few service sectors struggling the most to achieve the transition from analog to digital and thus, primarily rely on traditional and analog business models. Guidance regarding the path towards becoming digital is lacking.
To fill out this gap, this Ph.D. thesis aims to introduce a maturity model as a strategic and systematic instrument that help personal service firms to assess their current developmental digitalization stage and show trajectories for improvements to guide the transition from an analog towards a stage of “digital maturity” in a holistic and well-structured manner.
Digital platforms (DPs) drastically change how users derive their value from offerings and how corporations interact with each other across fading global and organizational boundaries. The rapid development of DPs has already disrupted industries such as retail, entertainment, hospitality, transportation and fueled social and political controversies across the globe.
To evaluate the design of DPs in this thesis, I mainly rely on the concept engagement platforms (EPs). EPs are physical or virtual touchpoint designed to enable and ease the integration of resources. Thereby, co-creation of value between actors is facilitated. Such EPs utilize functionalities to attract users and build loyalty. As time and attention of users are limited, EPs providing the best fit and experience attract and bind the largest user base, thus further increasing their usefulness to users due to network effects. In an increasingly globalized and digitalized world, this leads to an increased occurrence of “winner takes all environments”. To cement their status and keep users on their EPs, platform operators implement features that constantly seek the user’s attention. Yet, these practices may impact users negatively, e.g., through addictive potential or stress.
Consequently, platform operators and designers who try to create impactful and supportive EPs should not solely focus on traditional marketing metrics, such as retention, and maximizing daily usage. Instead, understanding the intended value that users seek to derive provides more appropriate and sustainable solutions for engagement platforms users. This dissertation derives design knowledge for EPs of both the B2C and the B2B sectors. To derive design knowledge for operators and designers, this dissertation follows the Design Science Research approach to provide practitioners with actionable knowledge on how to inform platform design with insight based on the Service Logic.
In today’s world, corporate teamwork is increasingly characterized by co-creation and dispersed stakeholders that need to collaborate for specific purposes, such as innovation development (Frow et al., 2015; Yoo, 2013). The dispersed setting of team members motivates a virtual instead of an on-site performance of teamwork to increase the possibility of uniting multiple and suitable stakeholders for specific tasks, while reducing the efforts to commonly be in the same place at the same time (Lipnack & Stamps, 1999). To meet the needs of a contemporary, systematic procedure for Innovation Management in a globalized world, the collaborative and co-creative innovation development approach Design Thinking (DT) needs to be facilitated toward a virtual performance (Furmanek & Daurer, 2019; Gräßler et al., 2017; Gumienny et al., 2011).
In order to prepare the foundation for a Virtual Design Thinking (VDT) approach, an in-depth examination of commonly analog-performed DT was conducted, and its underlying principles identified. The examinations on DT enabled to further investigate how the innovation development approach can be applied virtually. This undertaking was accompanied by measurements that indicate the success of the VDT performance in adhering to a socio-cognitive view on effectiveness (Gilson et al., 2015; Hjørland, 2002).
With the aim to enable VDT, the research methodology Action Design Research was applied, which deploys practical, recurring, and meaningful interventions to gain insights regarding the collaboration of team members in a process of improving Information Systems in corporate problem contexts from a user-centered perspective (Sein et al., 2011; Veling et al., 2016). The emerging ensemble artifact, the VDT approach, mirrors an improved setting of given, real-life corporate problems (Purao et al., 2013). As a result, this dissertation presents an applicable VDT approach for companies that is perceived as satisfying and effective by the team members.
This dissertation investigates how cross-functional teams build and maintain trust. Teamwork is challenging and requires trust, a complex process created in the interaction of team members, and embedded in the organizational system. But there is limited research on how cross-functional teams build and maintain trust in practice, and on the meanings and interpretations that team members, managers, and consultants ascribe to trust. Much research explains how team members gather and signal trustworthy information, but not how they interpret this information during team interactions. To address these research gaps, this thesis draws on social practice theory and offers empirical evidence for a practice approach on trust in teams. Team members, managers, and consultants were interviewed and a cross-functional team kick-off was observed to find out how trust as a practice is conceptualized and produced. Qualitative content analysis, metaphor analysis, and interpretive analysis were used to analyze the data. Research findings include several metaphors of trust in cross-functional teams, specific trust-building and maintenance practices, and illustrations of how these practices are produced and reproduced in team interactions. Trust as a social practice thus moves research from the path of demonstrating that trust in teams is important in contexts of high vulnerability and uncertainty, to the path of how trust becomes important in these contexts by meaning and interpretation. Considering these findings, future studies should focus more on the collective patterns of meaningful activities that build and maintain trust, the use of metaphors to study trust in teams, and the nonverbal cues that build and maintain trust.
