eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

Objectives of the Study:

The objective of this study is to better understand the factors affecting software adoption decision-making in Finnish accounting firms. These firms are, more often than not, smaller organisations and same systems are used for long periods of time. As efforts to improve data transfer standards and processes progress at the regulatory level, it is curious to see how technology adoption decision-making takes place at a firm level.

Academic background and methodology:

The primary academic framework utilised in this thesis the Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE) Framework. Data is gathered from two case companies through interviews with respective CEOs. TOE Framework is for framing the questions and analysing the interview results. These results will be mirrored with earlier findings in literature to validate earlier work as well as explore possible new factors that affected decision-making in the case companies.

Findings and conclusions:

The study found that case accounting firms' decision-making is affected by established IT infrastructure, workforce's ability to use technology, readiness of the clientele, types of services provided, and ability of authorities to receive data electronically in automated means. However, competitive pressure and regulatory control only played a limited role in decision-making at the time the cases were studied.