Rate My Professor Paula Koskinen Sandberg

Paula Koskinen Sandberg is an Assistant Professor in Organizational Communication at Aalto University School of Business, Department of Management Studies, a position she has held since August 2022. She also holds the title of Academy Research Fellow. She earned her PhD from Hanken School of Economics on 16 December 2016, with a doctoral thesis titled “The Politics of Gender Pay Equity.” Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked in project research on gender equality and working life at several Finnish universities and research institutes, and briefly in a trade union and the Gender Equality Unit within Finnish state administration. After completing her PhD, she served as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Tampere from January 2017 to August 2018 and held an Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher position from 2018 to 2022.

Her research is multidisciplinary, combining organization studies, communication studies, feminist studies, and political/policy studies. She examines how inequalities related to gender, class, and ethnicity are reproduced and challenged in and through communication and organizing in work organizations and society at large. Key research areas include neoliberal competitiveness policies, gender equality policy, advocacy and lobbying, public sector employment, and collective bargaining. As principal investigator, she leads several Academy of Finland-funded projects, such as REDEFINE (Redefining the value of feminized work? Actors, interests and institutional work within Finnish employment relations, 2024–2028), ADVOCACY (The Influence of Business Advocacy in Finnish Employment Relations and Governmental Policies, 2024–2028), and Responsible business conduct in conflict affected context (2024–2026). Selected publications include co-editing the Handbook on Gender and Public Sector Employment (Edward Elgar, 2023); “Maintaining gender inequality in wages? The case of employer organisations’ and business advocacy groups’ resistance to pay transparency legislation in Finland” (Critical Social Policy, 2025, with Aino Sipura); “Doing Feminist Participatory Action Research: The Case of a Social Movement Aiming at Higher Wages for Early Childhood Education Teachers” (Sage Publishing, 2024); and “Intertwining gender inequalities and gender-neutral legitimacy in job evaluation and performance-related pay” (2017, cited 103 times). She co-chairs the European Sociological Association Research Network 14 “Gender Relations in the Labour Market and the Welfare State” and serves on the editorial board of Work, Employment and Society (2022–2025). Her scholarship includes 19 press and media appearances and presentations at international conferences such as the Academy of Management.