Doktorandenstudium im Department für Strategie, Organisation und Leadership

Our vision for doctoral studies in our department
Through our doctoral program, we educate our doctoral students to be proficient researchers in their chosen field of interest. Our doctoral program is designed primarily as a leadership development platform for future generation of academics, although doctoral students may decide to take positions outside of academia, too. The program emphasizes rigor in research combined with a focus on real-world problems that are worth studying, teamwork, and exposure to the international academic community. We are very selective in our approach to admitting doctoral students and we accept only a few with whom we tend to work very closely.

Characteristics and conditions

• All the general rules and regulations for doctoral studies at EBS apply. In the following, we outline department-specific characteristics and conditions above and beyond these general rules.

• The minimum GMAT Score for admission is 630.

• In principle, we accept both “internal” * and “external” doctoral students. However, even “external” doctoral students are expected to spend a minimum of 1-1,5 years at EBS, working in our team rooms with other doctoral students. We provide them with office space. During this time, we expect “external” doctoral students to concentrate on their research, with few other obligations outside of EBS. In terms of their status as doctoral students, we do not distinguish between “internal” and “external” doctoral students.

• We aim to make a contribution to the work of our doctoral students, and we collaborate closely with them. Therefore, we supervise doctoral theses only in those topic areas in which we have a close interest ourselves, and where we can claim some competency. As a result, the general topic area and the specific research questions of doctoral theses (or parts thereof), are chosen in conjunction between doctoral students and faculty members, not unilaterally by the doctoral students alone.

• All doctoral dissertation projects in our department involve some empirical work, broadly understood. We do not encourage purely theoretical or conceptual work. Empirical research generally requires mastery of particular methods. EBS offers many methods-related courses, and within our team, a lot of competencies in particular methods are available, too. However, if a doctoral project requires mastery of different methods that are not available in-house, we encourage our doctoral students to acquire these methods elsewhere (e.g., through EIASM, the University of Essex, etc.)

• During term-time, the department offers a regular (at least bi-weekly) research seminar. Doctoral students are expected to attend these, if at all possible.

• In addition, we regularly hold so-called “writing workshops”, where the participants discuss research in progress. Doctoral students are expected to attend these, and submit their own work to these workshops at intervals. As with all participants (faculty members included!), they are required to read the paper(s) to be discussed in advance of the respective workshop, and come prepared with a set of comments for the author(s).

• Moreover, we organize a 2-3 day research workshop outside of EBS on an annual basis, where doctoral students present their work. Often times, this research workshop would take place at some other school / university with which we are associated (e.g., we have held such research workshops at INSEAD, St. Gallen University, and at Jacobs University in Bremen). At other times, we have held research workshops at country houses or mountain huts in Italy and Switzerland. The Department would typically bear the accommodation costs, while doctoral students pay for their travels and for meals.

• Doctoral students at the department write academic papers with the aim to publish them in recognized, peer-reviewed journals. Doctoral students then bundle their papers into so-called “cumulative dissertations”. In recent decades publishing in international peer-reviewed journals has become the prominent practice for scientists for good reasons. This approach has several implications:

1. All papers / theses are to be written in English.
2. As a benchmark, doctoral students write approximately three papers. Under specific circumstances, there may be fewer or more papers that make up a doctoral thesis.
3. Often times, these papers are the result of research collaborations involving several doctoral students and/or faculty members and/or academics from other schools or research institutions. We welcome collaborative research.
4. All papers / theses are to be written in English.
5. We encourage doctoral students to submit their papers for presentation at academic conferences, and for publication in peer-reviewed journals. However, they should not submit their work to such journals prematurely. Therefore, acceptance or actual publication of these papers is not a precondition for the successful completion of the doctoral program.

• As a general rule, in the first year of their programme, doctoral students should do much of the required coursework. They should also develop a clear view of their overall research topic, review the literature in this field, and identify central research questions they would like to pursue. In the second year, they should work on specific papers that form part of their doctoral work. By the end of the second year, they should have at least one fully-fledged paper that they can submit to conferences and potentially to journals, and have made good progress with a second paper.

• All doctoral students are strongly encouraged to spend some time (usually 3-4 months) as visiting scholars at a research-oriented business school or university abroad. So far, we have had doctoral students spend time at the Universities of Oxford, Berkeley, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, at Bocconi, and at INSEAD. We help our doctoral students to get the appropriate lead into such schools i.e., to find sponsors (in the non-financial sense of the word) who are willing to act as supervisors. Typically, the research stay at a foreign university is most beneficial in the second half of the second year or in the first half of the third year of a student’s doctoral work, but this may vary from case to case.

• We strongly support our doctoral students with applications for scholarships, stipends, travel & research funding and the like.

• We have a strong culture of feedback and mutual support in the department. Anybody who does not like giving or receiving advice is unlikely to enjoy the working environment which we offer. For example, there are often more faculty members than just the two official co-supervisors present in students’ proposal defences. Also, students receive informal advice and feedback from faculty members, regardless of whether they are the official co-supervisors or not.

• On the average, completion of a doctoral project takes about three years. Of course, there may be cases where doctoral students complete their work earlier or later than that, but we encourage students neither to delay nor to “rush through” their doctoral work.

• Last but not least, we hope that our doctoral program offers a real learning and development opportunity to students, and that you enjoy working with us faculty members as much as we enjoy working with you. Please do give us feedback on your “doctoral experience” as it emerges.

* „Internal“ doctoral students have a part-time employment contract as research and teaching assistants at EBS.