Dissertation defence (Entrepreneurship): KTM Matti Karinen

KTM Matti Karinen defends the dissertation in Entrepreneurship titled “Legitimacy Dynamics and Sustainability Transitions: A Palm Oil governance case in Liberia 2008-2025” at the University of Turku on 2 October 2026 at 12.00 (University of Turku, Turku School of Economics, Lähitapiola lecture hall, Rehtorinpellonkatu 3, Turku).

Opponent: Associate Professor Rory Padfield (University of Leeds, United Kingdom)

Custos: Senior Research Fellow Seppo Poutanen (University of Turku)

Summary of the Doctoral Dissertation:

My dissertation examines why sustainability projects can remain deeply contested even when companies, governments and sustainability organisations broadly agree that change is needed. The research follows the development of Golden Veroleum Liberia, a large palm oil investment in Liberia, from 2008 to 2025. The project was intended to bring jobs, infrastructure and economic development while following international sustainability standards, but it became the subject of a long-running dispute over land, community consent and the meaning of sustainable development.

The study shows that there is rarely a single answer to whether a project is seen as legitimate or acceptable. Different groups can judge the same project in very different ways, and those judgements can develop separately over time. A company may satisfy a formal sustainability standard or resolve a complaint in one governance process while conflict continues among communities, civil-society organisations or other actors. In the Liberia case, the formal complaints process eventually ended, but this did not create one shared view of the project or erase the different experiences and expectations that had developed around it.

A central finding is that these conflicts are shaped not only by what actors want today, but also by their experiences of the past and by the different futures they believe a project will create. Local communities, companies, governments, investors and international sustainability organisations may all support “development” or “sustainability” while imagining very different outcomes. The same decision can therefore appear reasonable and beneficial in one setting, inadequate in another, and harmful in a third.

The dissertation develops a framework for analysing these dynamics across time, physical places and different arenas in which legitimacy is formed and contested – what the dissertation calls “legitimacy process spaces”. Rather than asking only which stakeholders matter, it asks where a legitimacy problem is actually being shaped, who has the authority to shape it there, and how events in one space affect what happens in others over time. This helps explain why certification, legal compliance, reporting or stakeholder engagement may solve part of a problem without resolving the wider conflict.

Although the research focuses on palm oil in Liberia, the underlying challenge is relevant to many sustainability transitions that change how land and natural resources are used, including agriculture, forestry, mining, renewable energy and infrastructure. The findings suggest that organisations and governance bodies need to pay more attention to how local realities, competing expectations and different visions of the future interact with formal sustainability systems. The framework does not offer a simple recipe for avoiding conflict, but it provides a way to diagnose emerging legitimacy problems earlier and to understand why apparently resolved disputes may persist. That can support more realistic and context-sensitive approaches to sustainability transitions that need to work not only in policy and standards, but also in the places and communities where change is actually experienced.