A digital divide and its determinants: leaders and laggards in the digitalisation of Finnish accounting firms

This study explores factors that influence the adoption of digital accounting. The literature suggests that perceived benefits, organisational readiness and external pressures promote the adoption of technical innovations. Using a mixed-methods approach, we combine interviews and a survey to test this theory. An exploratory factor analysis of a survey of Finnish accounting firms results in five factors. These are: 1) ‘attitudes and perceived benefits’ representing the thoughts that digitalisation improves working efficiency and opens up new business opportunities to accounting firms; 2) ‘lack of competence’ indicating a perception that a firm lacks required competence; 3) ‘investment in operations development’ which relates to a firm's development in new services; 4) ‘lack of customer pressure’ which indicates that customers have no demand for digital accounting services; 5) ‘keeping up with digitalisation’ which relates to the perceived importance of digitalisation.