Tuomas Korhonen: Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management

Tuomas Korhonen’s academic career has developed around one central question: how do people, sustainability, business, and technologies work together in organizations?
Over the years, Korhonen has studied management accounting, managerial decision-making, project and R&D management, digitalization, and the human side of organizational change. He is currently interested in how managers use information about business feasibility and sustainability in their work and how organizations consequently make decisions when several values are involved. 
Korhonen began his academic path at Tampere University of Technology, where he first worked as a research assistant and then as a doctoral candidate from 2010 to 2014. His doctoral dissertation, Performance Measurement Dynamism in Product Development, examined how performance measures can support action and decision-making in changing organizational contexts. 
Before and alongside his academic career, Korhonen gained experience in both private and public-sector contexts. This practical background has remained important in his academic work, which often connects closely with companies and their real managerial challenges.
After completing his doctorate, Korhonen continued at Tampere University as a postdoctoral researcher from 2014 to 2020. During this period, he developed a strong research profile in management accounting, project management, new product development, and decision-making under uncertainty. In 2016, he was also a visiting scholar at Aarhus University, where he conducted management accounting research and strengthened international research collaboration at the Department of Management.
From 2020 to 2021, Korhonen worked as a Senior Research Fellow in Industrial Engineering and Management. In December 2021, he was appointed Associate Professor (tenure track) at Tampere University. Since then, he has continued to research and supervise management accounting topics in close collaboration with the industry. His recent work has paid particular attention to profitability management vis-à-vis values such as sustainability.
Korhonen’s research is broad, but it is clearly connected by an interest in how organizations create, use, and communicate knowledge for sense- and decision-making. His work has appeared in journals such as Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, International Journal of Project Management, Project Management Journal, Journal of Management Control, Journal of Management & Governance, and Public Money & Management, and Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management .
A distinctive feature of Korhonen’s academic profile is his engagement with pragmatic constructivist research. This approach studies how people construct workable organizational realities through facts, possibilities, values, and communication. Korhonen has contributed to this field both through his own research and through editorial work. Between 2017–2026, he served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Pragmatic Constructivism (earlier Proceedings of Pragmatic Constructivism) and from 2026 onwards he serves as Associate Editor in the journal.
At Tampere University, Korhonen is affiliated with the Cost Management Center in Industrial Engineering and Management. His teaching and supervision focus on management accounting that supports managerial work and decision-making. He works with topics that are important for both research and practice: how organizations manage profitability, how accounting information supports product and service development, how digitalization affects managerial work, and how organizations make decisions in complex environments. Through his career, Korhonen has built a profile that combines academic depth with practical relevance. As Professor, his work helps organizations understand not only numbers and systems, but also the people, values, technologies, and decisions behind them.