PhD · Business
Doctor of Philosophy (Business)
Australian Institute of Business, Adelaide, SA, Australia
About this program
AIB's PhD sits alongside its DBA as the university's other doctoral offering, but where the DBA is explicitly a professional practice doctorate for senior managers and consultants investigating a workplace problem, the PhD follows the traditional academic model: an independent, supervised research project intended to generate new theoretical knowledge in a business, commerce or management-related discipline, typically aimed at candidates who want to move into academia or high-level research roles rather than stay in corporate management.
Like the DBA, candidates work with a supervisory panel (a principal supervisor and associate supervisor(s)) over a multi-year candidature, and the thesis has to represent a genuine, original contribution to the field rather than an applied practice project.
It's the right choice for someone whose interest is in the theory itself, testing a management framework or building new empirical evidence in a business discipline, rather than someone trying to solve a specific problem inside their own organisation, which is the more common motivation behind AIB's DBA candidates.
Cost & duration
English test scores
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Course structure
5 terms of coursework
- Stage 1: research methods and discipline literature review, development of a research proposal
- Stage 2: proposal confirmation with supervisory panel (principal and associate supervisors)
- Stage 3: independent research, data collection and analysis
- Stage 4: thesis writing, submission and oral examination
- Focus: original theoretical or empirical contribution to a business, commerce or management discipline
Admissions
Masters degree with a substantial research component
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