Research and the process of writing a final thesis highly depend on your motivation to work on the topic. Therefore, we encourage students to propose their own final thesis project! Your thesis can be based on various kinds of research methods, such as literature reviews, case studies, or modelling approaches. We prefer topics somehow related to the current research our chair members are involved in. However, this should definitely not exclude students with a different interesting topic which originates in the field of management accounting. You are more than welcome to approach us with such a final thesis project.
Our research is investigating management accounting in the context of sustainability. Management accounting and the pathway to a sustainable economy are intertwined, both on an individual company level and for the economy as a whole. Increased pressure from governments, consumers, investors, and NGOs lead companies to include information about sustainability in their reporting, also known as corporate social responsibility (CSR) or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. However, for a company to lead the shift to more sustainable practices, it needs to identify, assess, and implement opportunities for more sustainable processes and products. This is where management accounting can help!

Literature to get started:

- Bierer, Anett; Götze, Uwe (2012): Energy Cost Accounting: Conventional and Flow-oriented Approaches. In: Journal of Competitiveness 4 (2), S. 128–144. DOI: 10.7441/joc.2012.02.09.

- Christ, K. L., & Burritt, R. L. (2015). Material flow cost accounting: a review and agenda for future research. Journal of Cleaner Production, 108, 1378-1389.

- Kaplan, Robert; Ramanna, Karthik (2021): Accounting for Climate Change: The First Rigorous Approach to ESG Reporting. In: Harvard Business Review 99 (6), S. 120–131.

- Finnveden, G., Hauschild, M. Z., Ekvall, T., Guinée, J., Heijungs, R., Hellweg, S., ... & Suh, S. (2009). Recent developments in life cycle assessment. Journal of environmental management, 91(1), 1-21.Paper 4

- Sandberg, Jörgen; Alvesson, Mats (2011): Ways of constructing research questions: gap-spotting or problematization? In: Organization 18 (1), S. 23–44. DOI: 10.1177/1350508410372151.