INHALT
Sustainable Financial Steering focuses on embedding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) aspects into all key financial management processes — including planning, budgeting, forecasting, controlling, and reporting.
Unlike Sustainable Finance or Green Finance, this topic emphasizes internal corporate processes, where financial decision-making aligns with sustainability goals and regulatory requirements (e.g., CSRD, EU Taxonomy).
A maturity model is a conceptual framework that describes stages of development within a specific organizational area, from basic to advanced levels. It allows companies to assess their current maturity, identify gaps, and plan their progression toward best practices.. |
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AUFGABENSTELLUNG
In this Master Thesis, the student will develop a maturity model for Sustainable Financial Steering, helping companies understand how well they integrate sustainability into their financial management processes.
Why is this relevant?
Companies increasingly face the challenge of aligning financial management with sustainability goals. Regulatory pressure, stakeholder expectations, and strategic risks all demand a structured approach. Yet, practical guidance is scarce on how companies are (or should be) implementing sustainability in their financial processess.
The maturity model developed in this thesis will help companies self-assess, benchmark, and navigate their development toward integrated sustainable financial steering.
What Will the Student develop?
- Conduct a systematic literature review of existing maturity models, frameworks, and concepts from related fields (e.g., IT, ESG controlling, integrated reporting, sustainability performance management).
- Synthesize existing approaches into an integrated, overarching maturity model that reflects the complexity of financial steering.
- Define core dimensions and criteria representing maturity levels (from initial awareness to full integration of sustainability).
- Link the model to regulatory requirements (e.g., CSRD, EU Taxonomy) that drive the need for sustainable financial steering.
- (Optional) Validate the draft model through expert interviews or feedback rounds with practitioners. |