RAE2015 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TURKU PEER-EVALUATION REPORT DEPARTMENT OF ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE

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1 RAE2015 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TURKU PEER-EVALUATION REPORT DEPARTMENT OF ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE Turku School of Economics

2 RAE2015 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TURKU PEER-EVALUATION REPORT DEPARTMENT OF ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE Turku School of Economics Panel: Ann Jorissen (chair), Kirsimarja Blomqvist, Ted Fuller, Tage Madsen, Jaakko Pehkonen 1. OVERALL RATING OF THE UNIT RATING: Sufficient to Excellent The Department of Accounting and Finance consists of academics active not only in Finance and Accounting, but also in Business Law and Quantitative Methods in Management (QMM). In many universities and business schools Accounting and Finance people are working together in one department. At the Turku School of Economics academics of two other disciplines have joined the department of Accounting and Finance. First of all there are the academics active in the area of Business Law who joined the department because of relatedness with respect to teaching. When the TSE merged with the UTU the academics working in the domain of Business Law did not join the Faculty of Law at UTU but they stayed in the TSE. The second group that joined the Department of Accounting and Finance are academics working in the area of quantitative methods in management. They have chosen to join the Department of Accounting and Finance since their research interests were more leaning towards research in finance rather than economics. We not only notice heterogeneity among Accounting and Finance, Business Law and Quantitative Methods in Management, we also observe heterogeneity within the Accounting and Finance group. In fact the Accounting and Finance group consists of three subgroups of academics. The first group consists of people teaching and researching in the area of management accounting and management control. This group has a very strong research tradition. The second group consists of people teaching financial accounting and auditing and focusing on financial accounting research. The third group consists of a few people who teach finance and who started research in finance only a few years ago. The Department of Accounting and Finance is satisfied with this heterogeneity and has no demands for restructuring. As a result of this heterogeneity in subjects but also in research traditions, it is very difficult to provide an overall judgement for the Department of Accounting and Finance. The evaluation for the different units goes from sufficient to excellent. Using the average would lead to an overall rating of good, however a rating good would not be a fair representation of the research performed by some of the units. Therefore when responding to the questions below, we do take into account the heterogeneity within the Department of Accounting and Finance. We will distinguish between the following subgroups or units: management accounting, financial accounting, finance, business law and quantitative methods in management (QMM).

3 2 / 14 Although we are aware that we have to rate the overall performance of the department, we start from the performance of the subgroups. Based on the analysis of the performance of these subgroups we can state that the Department of Accounting and Finance gets a grading sufficient to excellent, whereby the management accounting group gets an excellent pointing towards outstanding, the financial accounting group gets a good, the finance group is starting to develop research activities and therefore difficult to grade, the business law group gets sufficient and QMM gets good pointing to excellent. 2. Description of the research activity during the evaluation period As a result of the diversity of subjects researched in the Department of Accounting and Finance, it makes sense to evaluate the research of the different units separately. RATING Overall rating Sufficient to Excellent RATING: Management Accounting excellent pointing towards outstanding/ financial accounting, QMM good/ Finance (because of its early stage), Business Law/ sufficient Scientific quality and innovativeness of the research activity: Research Quality Assurance leads to excellence The management accounting unit studies management accounting questions with an interpretive, critical and interventionist research approach. This research approach goes hand in hand with case research. In this research domain the management accounting unit of the University of Turku excels. This results in high quality publications, a high number of citations, national and international co-operation and funding from external agencies like the Academy of Finland and TEKES. The reason for this success is the emphasis in the subgroup on good scholarship implying that quality instead of quantity is pursued. In order to realize that objective the subgroup has installed a system of research quality assurance. This system consists of intensive collaboration and constructively critical interaction within the unit together with intensive national and international cooperation. This research quality assurance system leads to the publication of influential papers that contribute to the debate in management accounting and the function of management accounting. The chosen research approach to management accounting namely the interpretative, critical and interventionist research approach is mainly adopted by European researchers. As a result a number of top tier journals, all mainly US-edited (all JUFO 3), will probably not publish this type of research. So the number of highly ranked publication outlets of the management accounting unit is more limited. On the other hand this also implies that the competition in this domain is geographically more limited.

4 3 / 14 Developing international networks to ensure the future The financial accounting unit made progress in the period and is continuing in a positive direction. The financial accounting unit researches topics which are examined by many researchers worldwide and the competition around these themes; especially with respect to accounting quality is fierce. The financial accounting unit evolved from more local financial accounting research IFRS quality of Nordic firms to more broader research projects which resulted already in one nice academic publication in a good quality journal over the period of assessment. This unit also started to build up international co-operation and they managed to get funding for their projects. The unit started recently a new research stream namely on the domain of sustainability reporting and sustainability orientation. With respect to this topic collaboration with other units in UTU could be developed. Building the future With respect to research, the finance unit is still in the very early stages of its life cycle. Until recently in the Department of Accounting and Finance, finance was taught by academics who only had teaching activities. In the period under assessment the only staff member in the area of finance received tenure in So the research quality to evaluate in the domain of finance is the research of one person and his doctoral student. As a result of the recent start it is very difficult to evaluate the unit. The panel observes that research activities and research co-operation is started in such a way that this unit becomes more visible in Finland and could possibly develop into a successful research unit. Given the size of the unit co-operation will always be key for this unit. Traditions are still treasured The Business Law unit continues to a large extent the almost exclusive teaching-focused tradition form from the TSE before the merger. With respect to current research they concentrate mainly on research topics that are relevant for the national environment. In particular the research on tax minimization and corporate social responsibility attracted research attention in Finland. In addition to these topics of national interest, the staff members of the Business Law units undertake a few international comparative studies (a.o. a study on differences in capital gains tax published by the IBFD). In comparison to the other units in the Department of Accounting and Finance the research output of the subgroup Business Law is more limited and nationally oriented. Cooperation of the Business Law unit is not with the Faculty of Law in UTU but with other Business Law units in other universities in Finland. Co-operation with other departments as the key to success The QMM unit has built up a reputation in Finland and is now pursuing efforts to attract international research attention. The unit pursues two different research strategies. First they conduct research in two specific fields being optimal stopping and stochastic control of diffusion processes. This research results in publications. Second, the fact that quantitative

5 4 / 14 methods of analysis are used in many other disciplines leads also to a strategy of providing statistic consulting which then evolves into co-authorship on papers. This strategy resulted in co-authored Jufo 3 publications in journals of exact sciences. Achievements in relation to the main resources If we relate the research output to the people employed in the different units, then we can state that Management Accounting reached the highest quality output with the resources provided and Financial Accounting, Finance and QMM used their resources also to achieve a reasonable number of publications. The Business Law group was not able to use the resources to the same extent to generate academic publications, they used the resources more to create societal impact through textbooks, providing advice and accepting memberships in committees. indicate strengths, weaknesses and other remarks: Strengths and weaknesses of these subgroups are discussed in the sections above and will be discussed further in the sections below. 3. Organization and personnel during the evaluation period The organization of the Department of Accounting and Finance is explained in the first paragraphs of this report. The number of people employed in the Department is rather stable over the period of evaluation. This is also due to the fact that the basic funding of this Department received from UTU finances most of the staff and only a limited number of people are financed by other sources. According to the authors of the self-assessment report, there are many synergies between the different disciplines in the department. After reading the report and after the discussion, we observed with respect to research that the only cooperation between Finance and QMM was with respect to PhD supervision. Co-operation with other units within the Department of Accounting and Finance and with other units of the TSE or UTU does not seem to exist in a formal way (e.g. also the Finland Futures Research Center studies sustainability ), co-operation arises when personal research interests overlap with the research interests of members of other departments. The department promises more cooperation in the future (see RAE self-evaluation report question 15) RATING: Good recruiting policy of researchers at various career stages The Department of Accounting and Finance has a lot of difficulties to attract PhD students. Graduate students majoring in accounting and finance receive very tempting job offers and have a wide variety of possible jobs to choose from. Attracting bright scholars to pursue a PhD is a bottleneck for this department. Recruiting people in later career stages presents a challenge as well. Foreign academics are less eager to move permanently to Finland. For that reason most staff members with a PhD have a PhD from the University of Turku or from

6 5 / 14 another university in Finland. In 2013 only two staff members were hired with a PhD from outside Finland. Possibilities for researchers to proceed in their career People employed by the Department have the possibility of developing an academic career. Much attention is devoted to the progress of early career academics in the Department. Balance between research and teaching: good with some concerns This Department has to teach and supervise a lot of students. In order to cope with this high demand for teaching and supervising this department employs a number of people that only provide teaching services. These academics that do not do any research allow other staff members to pursue their research. However if research-based teaching becomes the norm, this policy represents a serious danger for accreditation. The panel suggests that these teaching staff members also be involved in research activities in the future. Gender and equality issues: (a) gender balance and proportion of foreign personnel: and (b) parental leave issues and gender balance: There is a fair gender balance among teaching and research staff. However the professors of the department are all male. The large majority of the people employed in the department are Finnish nationals. 4. Research funding during the evaluation period RATING: Good Success of the unit in competing for funding; excellent with respect to Academy of Finland The major external source of funding for the department is the Academy of Finland. In the period of assessment, the Accounting Group was able to successfully attract research funds from the Academy of Finland. The Business Law unit was not able to attract funds so far. The staff involved in Finance and Quantitative Methods in Management were able to attract personal research budgets. In the period before the assessment QMM had attracted a large research grant. is the division of external funding into the different categories as shown in appendix C appropriate? If we analyze the ratio basic funding/external funding, the Department of Accounting and Finance does not perform well in comparison to the other Departments and the other units of the TSE. None of the subgroups of the Department of Accounting and Finance so far was able

7 6 / 14 to attract European Funding (the financial accounting group participated already in two European calls). The weak basic funding/external funding ratio is also a result of a deliberate choice of many academics in the Department of Accounting and Finance. Their target is to have one big project of the Academy of Finland and devote all the remaining time for research instead of developing new research proposals. Moreover they decided to only respond to those calls for research that are directly aligned with their own research interest. Writing research proposals would consume a lot of the time available for research. They think that responding to calls should be a research driven activity and not a money driven activity. Until now they had sufficient staff members in the department to develop their research ideas and turn them into research projects and finally papers. They have good access to companies through executive teaching so that there is no need to acquire research funds to collect data via surveys or to buy databases. It is a question as to whether or not this attitude will still be appropriate in the future when budget cuts will reduce the number of positions available to the Department of Accounting and Finance. The assessment further reveals that funding through projects from the government or ministries have neither been pursued by the members of the Department. 5. Infrastructure during the evaluation period RATING: Good Major strengths and weaknesses in the unit s infrastructure: good as long as access to databases is guaranteed Most important for the areas of research in this Department of Accounting and Finance is access to databases in addition to access to companies. Nowadays if one wants to stay competitive in the area of financial accounting and finance access to databases is key. Unfortunately the cost of access is also high. These two subgroups will only be able to perform if this facility is secured for them. It seems that they do have access to the necessary databases. Development of infrastructure in relation to research needs The department has the entire infrastructure to its disposal in order to pursue their research. Possible impact of the unit in developing research infrastructures: The self-assessment report does not mention that the Department is able to influence the infrastructure.

8 7 / Scientific quality of the research during RATING: From Sufficient to Excellent Evaluation of the scientific quality of the unit s research in relation to top national/international research Rating: management accounting excellent pointing towards outstanding, financial accounting good, business law sufficient and quantitative methods in management good towards excellent. For finance it is still preliminary to rate the output of the few people involved. It is difficult or almost impossible to express an appreciation of the scientific quality of the department as one group. The diversity within the department of Accounting and Finance does not allow an appreciation at department level. So the scientific quality of each individual unit must be taken into consideration. In section 2 the panel paid already a lot of attention to the research activities of the units and their quality. With respect to the interpretive, critical and interventionist type of management accounting research, the management accounting unit of the University of Turku belongs to the international top 5% in that specific area. Their papers are widely cited and they publish in top journals (3 articles in JUFO 3). The staff members of the unit participate in high quality conferences and are invited as speakers there. Some members of the group organize doctoral education at a European level (EIASM courses). The research of the financial accounting unit has attracted increased attention over the assessment period. However in the area in which the financial accounting unit is active, the competition is fierce. Researchers from all over the world focus on financial reporting issues, like accounting quality and also increasingly on sustainability reporting. This unit is not considered yet a top performer in their area, as the management accounting unit is. It is difficult to judge the quality of the finance unit, since this unit is in the development phase. The only staff member was able to realize some publications during the assessment period. The self-evaluation report of the Department of Accounting and Finance remains silent on the scientific quality of their unit Business Law. Since members of the Business Law unit devote most of their time to teaching, they do not produce output that attracts internationally attention; their output is mainly national; The QMM staff also published JUFO 3 articles. Their research papers are co-authored with other units of the University of Turku and Abo Akademi University and they generate international attention.

9 8 / Publications Rating: Excellent Evaluation of the publication policy and quality based on the self-evaluation report and appendixes D and E: The data in the appendixes D and E show an increase in international high quality publications. Given that the number of staff of the department is rather stable over the period of the assessment, this is an improvement for the department as a whole. The overall quality of the publications that the unit estimates as its most important ones The rating of the publications coincides with the appreciation of the research quality of the different subunits. Over the period the department has published 4 JUFO 3 publications, 10 JUFO 2 publications and 10 JUFO 1 publications. This trend continues in 2014 (1 JUFO 3 publication, 12 JUFO 2 publications and 10 JUFO 1 publications) and 2015 (January- October) (1 JUFO 3 publication, 2 JUFO 2 publications, 6 JUFO 1 publications). 8. Doctoral training as part of the scientific activity in the unit RATING: Excellent Organization and success of doctoral training in the unit The different subunits have somewhat different systems to guide and train PhD students. In the Management Accounting unit the system of research quality assurance which consist of intensive collaboration and constructively critical interaction within the department in combination with national and international interaction, ensures that doctoral students enter in a stimulating research environment. To guide PhD students in their first steps of research, the unit in addition to their system of research quality assurance, add the practice of describing the PhD project on two pages, whereby the focus is the theoretical motivation of the research questions. The Management Accounting unit has a long tradition of doctoral training which has proven to be successful in the past and resulted in a set of good practices to make PhD students succeed. The Professors of the unit are also actively engaged in organizing doctoral seminars and courses outside the University of Turku and at a European level (EIASM). In the financial accounting unit PhD students follow a similar trajectory, but the staff of the financial accounting unit is not engaged outside the University of Turku in providing doctoral training.

10 9 / 14 In the finance area the doctoral training is organized via the Graduate School of Finance. This Graduate School of Finance is a joint initiative of leading universities in Finland. The finance unit joined the GSF in 2012 and PhD students of the unit follow the teaching program for obtaining a PhD degree in Finance. The Finance unit is building up experience in tutoring doctoral students, since so far they only had one doctoral student in the period assessed. Since the finance unit is very small, it is a good decision to join the GSF for doctoral training. PhD students in the Business Law unit pursue a PhD program in the Faculty of Law and defend their PhD thesis also in the Faculty of Law. A number of the doctoral students of the Business Law unit choose to defend their PhD in the TSE. PhD students of the QMM unit follow doctoral courses in other departments of the University of Turku or in the GSF depending on the subject they choose as topic for their PhD. See comment Researcher mobility In the RAE self- evaluation report we get a description of how people are invited and what kind of expenses are reimbursed. The information provided relates mainly to invitations for paper presentations. From the data provided by the central departments of the university on exchange visits, we notice that the department mainly engages in short-term visits of incoming academics as well as outgoing staff. None of the department members has had a long stay abroad in the period considered for the evaluation, we observe several short stays. These short stays result from invitations the members of the Department get to present their research abroad or to participate in research projects. We do observe a long stay for a number of incoming academics in the department. The focus of the department lies on short-term researcher mobility. RATING: Excellent Evaluation of researcher mobility in the unit: The department and especially the accounting unit engage a lot in short term mobility. The constraint on this short-term mobility is the time available to the staff to spend on these visits. They receive more invitations than they can respond to. The visits must add value to the staff s own research projects. The Department, especially the management accounting unit receives a lot of invitations for paper presentations at other universities as well as demands from researchers from other universities to stay at the Department of the TSE. Attraction of international researchers: The members of the Department feel that Finland needs to market itself better in order to become an attractive place for researchers to settle.

11 10 / 14 So international researchers come to the department mainly for shorter to medium-term stays. Less enthusiasm is shown by international researchers for a permanent position in Finland. The management accounting unit hired recently an international staff member coming from a good quality university in Europe. 10. International co-operation and partners RATING: Excellent Success and extent of international co-operation: The rating is excellent for accounting; both the management accounting group as well as the financial accounting group has developed a lot of international co-operations. They are very active internationally and they choose their partners carefully. They have been able to integrate themselves in very good research teams. With respect to all other units in the Department of Accounting and Finance, we observe one international cooperation in the area of Business Law. International co-operation provided clear extra value for the research For the accounting group this international co-operation clearly adds value not only for constantly challenging their research ideas with other experts in the field but also for allowing them to attract good scholars to job openings and good scholars for mobility. The international cooperation is almost exclusively taken place in the accounting unit 11. National co-operation partners RATING: Excellent The rating for the accounting unit is excellent. Almost all projects in which national cooperations take place belong to the accounting unit. The staff of the Finance unit cooperates nationally through the Graduate School of Finance and through a projected funded by the Academy of Finland. National co-operation added extra value for the research. These national co-operations have value since it allows the units to get research funds from sponsors of research in Finland like the Academy of Finland and TEKES. see section 15

12 11 / Wide-range impact of research during RATING: Good Impact of the unit on basic and applied research The impact of the Management Accounting, Financial Accounting, Finance and QMM unit is more academic and related to basic research questions than wide-range and related to applied research issues. However the staff of the Management Accounting and Financial Accounting unit has societal impact on the one hand through executive teaching and on the other hand through feedback presentations to companies which provided them access to collect survey data and case data. The situation of the Business Law unit is different in that this unit deals much more with applied issues. Members of the Business Law unit exert a wide-range impact through positions in professional and expert organizations (e.g. banking complaints board, National Committee of Auditors, Finnish take-over Panel) and they have a wide-range impact on society through textbooks. 13. Innovations RATING Evaluation of Innovations described in the unit s self-evaluation report. The department states that for their area of research it is not an objective to pursue innovations. Probably the department related the concept of innovations only to new product development. 14. Special impact on the national and international scientific community RATING: Management Accounting excellent pointing towards outstanding/ financial accounting, QMM - good/ Finance (because of its early stage), Business Law/ sufficient Impact of the unit on the national and international scientific community. In terms of scientific leadership the performance of the management accounting unit in the area of interpretive, critical and interventionist type of management accounting is definitely excellent pointing towards outstanding. It is however important to keep in mind that the number of researchers in this area is more limited and that this tradition is a European tradition of researching management accounting topics. Within that specific area of

13 12 / 14 management accounting research the management accounting unit has built up excellent well known expertise and the professors of the unit participate in international doctoral courses to share and disseminate their knowledge. The Professors of the Management Accounting unit occupy positions of Associate Editor (European Accounting Review), Chair of the Publications Committee within the European Accounting Association and Chair of the Publications Committee of the Management Accounting Section of the American Accounting Association. Moreover the professor of Management Accounting is the co-organizer of the biannual workshop New Directions in Management Accounting Research which attracts worldwide participation. The financial accounting unit has research output which attracts international attention, but they are not in a leadership position like the management accounting unit is. The professor of Financial Accounting was invited in the Scientific Committee of the Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association (2010) and member of the panel of evaluators for the best article published in Corporate Governance (2010). The Finance unit is still building up its reputation. The Business Law unit produces mainly academic output relevant to the national environment. The research that makes QMM visible on the international scene is research in cooperation with other departments of the University of Turku and other universities in Finland like Abo Akademi University. Several members of the Department are invited in assessment panels and in doctoral jury s. See comments section Research activity plan The different units of the Department respond to this question in a very diverse way. The management accounting group mentions that they will continue with their interpretive, critical and interventionist type of research. Given the competencies they possess in this type of research it is highly likely that they will maintain their position in this type of management research and continue to develop high quality research in that specific area of management accounting. The financial accounting group describes the projects they will develop in the future, which allows the panel to see that they target new areas building on existing expertise built up over the assessment period and that this might be a fruitful research avenue in the future. The other three units (Finance, business law and QMM) provide information on how they think to improve their research output by describing structural changes and measures they will take in the coming years, rather than describing new research areas or existing research topics they will further develop. Therefore it is for the subunits Finance, Business Law and QMM difficult to judge whether or not they will be able to realize significant breakthroughs. The description of the research plan of Finance concentrate on hiring mechanisms and attracting young talented people, but it does not mention any specific research topics or research avenues in which they could become competitive. The future

14 13 / 14 research of the finance unit is described as finalizing the projects which are undertaken today. The Business Law unit lists a rather broad range of topics on which they could focus in the future. They see their limited number of staff and the fact that their research topics are more nationally oriented as impediments to develop more widely internationally recognized research. The success of QMM, which is also a small unit, seems to be highly dependent on their possibilities to cooperate with other units in the university or outside the university. Many of their papers originate from statistical consulting and end in co-authorship. Rating: good towards excellent Feasibility of the plan, ratio of planned investments and aimed outcomes and impacts, description of potential weaknesses that may affect reaching these aims, are alternative approaches being considered: Excellent for both accounting units, we receive information on the content of what they plan to do as well as the mechanisms. Good for finance, QMM and Business Law since we receive only information on the mechanisms they will use to increase their research potential in the future. The Business Law unit does mention topics to investigate in the future, however these topics are very broad and not focused yet. Potential of the plan for significant new outcomes, scientific breakthroughs, scientific progress in the field and potential outcomes and impact: The accounting units might generate output that will add value to existing insights in the literature, for the other units this is more difficult to evaluate based on the information received. Is there any scientific breakthrough not considered by the unit: no Estimate the planned national and international co-operation and networks in the light of the aimed outcomes and impacts: The planned co-operations will definitely benefit the research projects planned. Both the management accounting and the financial accounting subunit provide sufficient detail on how their ongoing and future research projects are in fact projects in which they cooperate internationally and nationally with well- respected scholars. In the Finance unit they will improve the visibility of their research in order to be able to start international cooperation. Estimate the potential of the described strategy for success in completion for funding: Since competition for funding becomes more difficult these days, it is difficult to make estimation about the potential. : Within the Department of Accounting and Finance we distinguish a high performing unit with respect to research and this is the Management Accounting Unit. Their objective is to go for quality over quantity and invest in developing influential papers that will influence the debate. For this purpose they have established a Research Quality Assurance System which implies intensive collaboration and constructively critical interaction within the department together with intensive national and international interaction (e.g. monthly seminars with the School of

15 14 / 14 Economics in Sweden) together with very close supervision and guidance of PhD students (e.g. two pager). This research focus and approach influenced the research drive of the financial accounting unit, as well as the finance unit and quantitative methods in management unit. The building blocks of this Research Quality Assurance could be beneficial for other units in the TSE. The Department of Accounting and Finance relied so far mainly on internal positions to conduct research. They were able to pursue their research objectives with the basic funding from UTU and projects from the Academy of Finland. The panel wants to make two observations with respect to this lack of external funding from other sources in the Department. First of all the members of the Department could pursue their research because a number of the staff in the department only concentrated on teaching. This might create problems when in the future research-based teaching becomes important in obtaining accreditations. Second if in the future cuts in the basic funding will appear, this Department will then have to develop a strategy as well as good practices to attract external funding besides the funds of the Academy of Finland. The Business Law unit in the Department of Accounting and Finance is still organized in a very traditional way. The emphasis of most staff members is on teaching and research is mainly national and co-operation also at the national level. The panel would like to suggest that the members of the Department of Business Law also look for possibilities to attract external funding, look at international possibilities for co-operation and start to develop research topics in Business Law that have many international aspects. Business Law provides opportunities for international publishing. We suggest that collaboration with the Faculty of Law might be an avenue to follow. The panel observes that co-operation with members outside the department results from personal initiatives only. The panel sees much more possibilities to co-operate for the Department of Accounting and Finance. For example the FFRC could share its experience to attract EU Funding with the Department and research collaboration on the topic of sustainability could be developed. PhD students from the Pori-Unit who have an accounting subject for their PhD could join the Accounting unit at TSE for research seminars and constructive and collaborative interaction. The panel sees possibilities in the collaboration which has recently been started by the QMM unit with the department of Mathematics and Statistics of UTU. We also suggest investigating possible synergies between the QMM and finance units and the Department of Economics. Both seem to teach corporate finance and study capital markets. The Department of Accounting and Finance face a constraint with respect to attracting good scholars to pursue a PhD. Like in all countries, Accounting and Finance Scholars are offered attractive job offers in Finland so that very few of them will consider the possibility to pursue a PhD. Attracting young scholars from other disciplines could be a solution to this constraint.