Sustainability at the core of new accounting courses – demand from industry and students
The course offering at the Oulu Business School is continuously developed to meet the needs of a changing labour market. Companies and finance professionals must take into account evolving reporting requirements, sustainability issues, and legislation, and adapt their operations accordingly. This requires up-to-date expertise.
EU standard guides corporate sustainability reporting
The Sustainability Reporting and Assurance course, introduced in autumn 2025 for students majoring in accounting and marketing, is based on the EU’s ESRS standard (European Sustainability Reporting Standards). The standard will affect an increasing number of companies in the coming years and define how companies should carry out sustainability reporting, covering environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects.
The aim of the course is for students to understand the key requirements of corporate sustainability reporting. “There is strong demand for experts, and companies need skilled professionals to prepare reports, as well as auditors to verify them,” says the course coordinator, Professor Juha-Pekka Kallunki.
“In the past, corporate responsibility reporting was seen as marketing; nowadays, every sentence and claim must be verified. This is done by an auditor,” he adds.
Exploring sustainability through management control systems
The Management Control for Sustainability course, starting in autumn 2026, examines the topic through management accounting and companies’ internal control systems, such as sustainability strategies. The course addresses various management control challenges from the perspectives of environmental responsibility as well as social and economic responsibility. It also considers the role of finance professionals in sustainability work.
The course content is also linked to external accounting through the concept of double materiality, which examines the impact of a company’s actions in two directions – such as on the environment and the surrounding community – and evaluates how these issues, in turn, affect the company itself. In addition, the course broadens the perspective from individual companies to the sustainability goals that guide their operations, which are connected to global, EU-level and national objectives and agreements, such as the Paris Climate Agreement.
“Some sustainability topics have been included in accounting courses before, but not to a sufficient extent. These issues require a course of their own,” says the course coordinator, University Lecturer Tiina Henttu-Aho. “Students are genuinely interested, and it clearly shows.”
OBS aims to place increasing emphasis on research-based teaching also in sustainability themes. The course starting in autumn is a strong example of this: it incorporates the latest research produced by the Business School’s academy projects, including topics such as carbon accounting and environmental accounting.