Faculty of Management and Business

Universities have been, and still are, the leading institutions of knowledge production. Global competition has reached to the higher education sector and the talk of the new social contract between higher education and societies has been on the table since 1980’s. In Finland the Universities Act reform was enacted in 2009 starting a broader societal conversation of the role, meaning and mission of the university institution.

Lately Finnish higher education sector has gone through a rough path. Substantial cuts have been performed in the budget of universities since 2015 and although small compensatory investments have been made, the direction of public funding in higher education appears to be declining and aligning the global trend of increasing marketization of the higher education system. Besides being crucial assets to nation-states and companies, information and knowledge are needed in order to find pathways towards more sustainable practices. In the times of the current planetary crisis, a well functioning, sustainable university system is more important than ever.

This thesis focuses to study the social and economic sustainability tensions in the Finnish university system and seeks answer to the question: ”What kind of social and economic sustainability tensions exist in the Finnish university system?”. The theory of the thesis is based on the integrative framework by Hahn et al. (2015), which was developed to study the tensions in the field of corporate sustainability. Recognizing the tensions and contradictions help organizations to see a broader spectrum of possible strategies in order to strive for more sustainable ways of operating.

This study follows the qualitative research tradition, the ontology of the study is social constructionism and subjectivism, and the methodology is phenomenology. The empirical part of this study consists of 11 semi-structured interviews of the management of two Finnish universities and of the senior officials of the Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland working with higher education policy.

The contribution of this thesis is, first of all, to view Finnish higher education through the emergent modern corporate sustainability lens uniting the perspectives of sustainability studies, political science, higher education studies and management studies in the theoretical framework. Secondly, this thesis provides three management perspectives from different, opposite sides of the Finnish university system and thirdly, forms a systemic perspective of the Finnish university system and its’ social and economic tensions. Based on the findings, there are eleven sustainability tensions in the Finnish university system. The most strongly perceived tensions according to this study were the tensions regarding pressure on the ‘public purse’ and pressures for societal impact and interaction.

Universities are increasingly engaged in marketization and are also expected to transform into more sustainable institutions and be change-agents pushing forward the movement of sustainable development. This article introduces an analytical framework originated by Hahn et al. (2015) for understanding tensions concerning corporate sustainability to the context of the Finnish university system in order to answer the following questions: What are the tensions relating to Finnish universities' social and economic sustainability, and what strategies might universities use to cope with these tensions? Through analyzing interviews with university managers and officials from the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland, we find that Hahn et al.'s framework is generally applicable in analyzing tensions of sustainability in universities, and we identify six tensions relating to the sustainability of Finnish universities. The tensions are related to 1) academic leadership and management legitimacy, 2) regional political tensions and university profiling, 3) political power over the university system, 4) changing academic work and profession, 5) academic autonomy and the role of the state, and 6) the future role of the university institution. Moreover, the article discusses issues regarding how to adapt the framework of corporate sustainability to the context of higher education.

Camera-based mobile interaction with the real world allows consumers to connect digital information with the real-world environment, and furthermore, to interact with realworld objects and places. To explore and understand the types of consumer value in the context of such consumer-level applications, we applied the critical incident technique to reflect actual use experiences from 107 application users with a recognized consumer value framework by Holbrook. The findings of the study suggest that at the current state value is heavily based on utilitarian efficiency and excellence. Although the applications enable a diverse value, they have yet to fulfill their potential in providing hedonic and other-oriented value.

Physical inactivity has become a prevalent problem among elderly people. Although digital wellness technologies have been proposed as one promising solution to it, our understanding on the antecedents of the acceptance and use of these technologies among elderly people remains limited. In this study, our objective is to promote this understanding by examining the potential changes in the use intention of digital wellness technologies and its antecedents over time in the case of the young elderly segment and physical activity logger applications. We base this examination theoretically on UTAUT2 and empirically on survey data that is collected from 99 Finnish young elderly users of a physical activity logger application and analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). We find the scores of both use intention and most of its antecedents to decline over time as well as some changes in the effects of the antecedents on use intention.

Today, more and more people are using different types of exercise monitoring devices to measure their physical exercise activities. However, the underlying reasons for using these devices remain vaguely understood. This study aims at addressing this shortcoming by first proposing a theoretical model for explaining the usage intentions of exercise monitoring devices and then empirically testing it in the case of one common type of these devices: heart rate monitors. The model is based on a synthesis of three distinct theoretical domainsthe theory of planned behaviour, the innovation diffusion theory, and the typology of consumer valueand it is tested by analysing an online survey sample of 3,036 Finnish consumers, or more specifically a sub-sample of 1,250 Finnish heart rate monitor owners, through structural equation modelling. The results of the analysis are also used to draw implications for the design and marketing of heart rate monitors.

In the past years, an increasing number of people have begun to use different types of exercise monitoring devices to measure their physical exercise activities. However, the underlying reasons why people use these devices remain very vaguely understood. This study aims at addressing this shortcoming by first proposing a theoretical model for explaining the usage intentions of exercise monitoring devices and then empirically testing it in the case of two common types of these devices: pedometers and route trackers. The model is based on a synthesis of three distinct theoretical domainsthe theory of planned behaviour, the innovation diffusion theory, and the typology of consumer valueand it is tested by analysing an online survey sample of 3,036 Finnish consumers, or more specifically sub-samples of 293 pedometer owners and 359 route tracker owners, through structural equation modelling. The results of the analysis are also used to draw implications for the design and marketing of the devices.

This study examines the habits of playing and the reasons for not playing digital exercise games (i.e., exergames), concentrating especially on the differences between four different age groups of players and non-players. Exergames can be considered an important and interesting research topic as they can be used to motivate people to do more exercise and, consequently, to improve their health and well-being. There are also potentially significant age differences in how these games are perceived. The study is based on analysing an online survey sample of 3,036 Finnish consumers by using contingency tables, the Pearson's χ 2 tests of independence, and the Cramér's V coefficients. The results of the analysis reveal 11 main reasons for not playing exergames as well as several age differences especially in the reasons for not playing exergames but also in the habits of playing exergames. Based on these results, the exergaming industry still seems to have a long way to go before exergames are perceived interesting enough in terms of the gaming experience and useful enough in terms of their effects on physical fitness. The findings of the study should be taken into account in the design and marketing of exergames.

The privacy and security of communication in corporations and governmental organizations has increased enormously over the years. At the same time, a growing amount of technological solutions to support this have emerged. This study examines user expectations before and use experiences during the implementation phase of a mobile secure communication application. These are investigated from the expectation–confirmation perspective and its influence on continued adoption. The study has an exploratory approach for this investigation. To guide the investigation, the study draws from the expectation–confirmation theory (ECT) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). Empirically, the study is qualitative and conducted in a governmental organization in Finland. The findings reveal the key user expectations and use experiences and their importance for users in terms of implementation and continued adoption of a mobile secure communication application.

The tremendous increase in online shopping has created a growing demand to understand online shopping behavior. This study contributes to this understanding by identifying ideal types among online shoppers. An ideal type is an analytical construct used to ascertain similarities and deviations to concrete cases in an individual phenomenon. Theoretically, the study draws from different perspectives to create a multifaceted view of online shoppers. The purpose is not to categorize online shoppers under a specific category but rather to help understand different typically occurring online shopping behaviors. Through thematic analysis of the data from 31 participants, this study presents five ideal types of online shoppers: conservative shoppers, rational shoppers, hedonistic shoppers, spontaneous shoppers, and vanguard shoppers. The formed ideal types serve as the main theoretical contribution of this study. From a practical standpoint, implications for online shop providers on how to a...

University aged people have been found to be at a high risk of disengagement of physical activity. They also belong to a generation where technology is strongly integrated into most parts of their lives. Therefore, using technology also in physical activity promotion has potential. This exploratory study investigates the perceived effects of a sport and wellness technology digital coach among physically inactive university students during a 10-week intervention. The perspective for the research came from exercise psychology focusing on the effects of the use of a digital coach on self-efficacy related to physical activity and exercising. The results indicate that a digital coach can increase the user's self-efficacy and awareness regarding their own exercising. However, the results also show that further development could be done for digital coaching to reach its full potential. These results give more insight to sport technology companies as well as to coaches and trainers about the effects and possibilities of digital coaching among physically inactive people.