Our Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) students are well established and recognised professionals in their fields in high-powered executive level jobs in various industries ranging from retail to corporate banking, from academia to government. One of our DBA students completed Staffordshire University’s Masters in Strategic Human Resource Management (HRM); another one had completed Staffordshire University’s Master of Business Administration (MBA) before joining the DBA programme, which demonstrates the varied progression options. Our DBA students come from diverse backgrounds both cultural and educational. They all have in common one thing though – they want to advance their careers as well as their respective fields, industries or companies through research.

Our DBA candidates use academic literature and rigorous research to develop new marketing metrics that will help firms in different industries predict their sales growth; they develop family business succession plans in countries where no such things exist; they investigate international trade opportunities in education services so that universities in their country can grow; some test existing models in new contexts, others develop new concepts and theories.

Such exciting collaboration enables Staffordshire University to be incredibly close to businesses at the highest level and contribute to their strategic decision making. One such example is a project that has spun out of a DBA research initiated by the HR Director of DFS.  A team of high calibre researchers presented findings directly to the DFS team and the cooperation flourishes. Read this post and this article to learn more.

In May our DBA students presented their research at a DBA symposium organised by the Chartered Association of Business Schools and Aston University Business School, where they worked with their peers from other DBA programmes and discussed their research under supervision of experienced academics, researchers and doctoral supervisors. The event was preceded by the Postgraduate Research Conference at Staffordshire University, to which our DBA students made a valuable contribution. In fact, authors of the very best papers were selected by the conference organisation committee to chair a session, giving students an important experience valued highly in academia. Later this year, our DBA students contributed to a very successful and productive DBA symposium organised by Cranfield School of Management and the British Association of Management in October. DBA candidates met with DBA supervisors, programme directors, and DBA students and graduates from universities all over the UK and abroad. Liaising with them enabled students to set a benchmark against the market standard and gauge their own progress. Debates and discussions about their research helped our students to develop confidence in articulating their research to specialist and non-specialist audiences. This is a key skill DBA candidates need to develop in order to be able to disseminate their research to practitioners as well as academics. This will also help them tremendously when they eventually defend their thesis during a viva voce examination.

Networking however doesn’t only happen at symposia or conferences. During the BAM symposium residential week our DBA students enjoyed an evening playing bowling with their peers and the Programme Director (who broke her finger trying to lift the side bars for them!). This was a great opportunity for our DBA candidates to get to know colleagues from other cohorts, who are in different stages of their doctorate, whilst trying something new as most of them had never bowled before. It strengthened the cohesion between and within cohorts and facilitated better teamwork and peer support amongst the DBA candidates, who are from different parts of the world.

To find out more about Staffordshire DBA contact the Programme Director
Dr Jana Fiserova, visit our website or follow us on Twitter #staffsDBA