Doctor of Business AdministrationCurriculum

The Doctor of Business Administration program at Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University is designed around the expectation that you, the practitioner-scholar, will develop the ability to think intensely and critically about problems confronting an organization, a community, a nation and the world.

By conceptually modeling these problems, assessing and modifying the assumptions underlying the models, testing assumptions empirically and applying modes of thought drawn from many disciplines, you will draw conclusions and propose solutions based on the results your models produce.

Our curricula and coursework provide a foundation for conducting rigorous research and practicing evidence-based management. Courses are interrelated theoretically and methodologically and prepare you to bring academic, theoretical and empirical perspectives to bear on problems that you face in your organization or in public policy advocacy.

Plus: Weatherhead’s PhD in Management: Designing Sustainable Systems offers an extension to the DBA. This program is for DBA students who have completed two years of our DBA program and wish to reorient their careers to formally pursue positions as academic researchers and scholars. As a DBA student, you can apply for this degree program during your second year in the DBA program.

Program Overview

Year One

• Identify problem of practice
• Understand & synthesize relevant literature
• Complete conceptual paper
• Initiate qualitative research project

Year Two

• Complete qualitative research paper
• Develop theoretical model
• Initiate quantitative research project

Year Three

• Complete quantitative research paper
• Complete dissertation composed of qualitative and quantitative research projects
• Integrate research projects into dissertation
• PhD in Management, Sustainable Systems

Additional Year

• Directed independent research
• Attend research workshops
• Comprehensive exam
• Proposal defense
• Dissertation defense

Research Requirements and Deliverables

There are several key components you’ll complete on your journey to earning your Doctor of Business Administration.

Research Proposal

The first research deliverable is a qualitative research proposal that frames your research problem of practice and research question. Additionally, the proposal specifies a design for the fieldwork portion of the qualitative research project. An inductive qualitative research proposal is developed that synthesizes a substantial (though not exhaustive) body of scholarly literature (theoretical and empirical) in a fashion that creates a conceptual framework that provides insight into a significant problem of practice reflecting the lived experiences of a specific group of practitioners.

The proposal outlines a broad research question to guide the qualitative research and specifies a design for the fieldwork to be carried out in the study. Students develop individual scholarly skills of reading, writing, conceptualizing (including framing), creating ethnographic/phenomenological/semi-structured interview protocols, conducting the semi-structured interviews, and interpretively coding and analyzing qualitative interview data.

Qualitative Research Paper

The qualitative research paper presents findings and explanatory concepts from a qualitative fieldwork research study. It identifies and frames a potent ""phenomenological practice gap"" wherein current practitioner and academic knowledge is lacking in guiding effective practice. The research synthesizes significant scholarly literature into a coherent conceptual framework and an understandable logical argument of relationships among theoretical constructs.

Students learn to frame effective questions for practitioner-scholarship research that embodies inquiry and openness, aligning the conceptual framework and research question to the chosen problem of practice, and to write scholarly papers that are clear and present a logical flow of well-supported arguments. By understanding the development of grounded theory and understanding ethnographic observation and field notes, students formally and rigorously code and analyze qualitative data in an interpretive fashion.

Quantitative Capstone Project

The Quantitative Capstone Project integrates the analytical approaches that students learn in DBAP 648: Causal Analysis of Business Problems I; DBAP 643: Measuring Business Behaviors and Structures, and DBAP 649: Causal Analysis of Business Problems II. The capstone exercise is intended to allow students to demonstrate your independent competence in quantitative inquiry skills and multivariate data analysis.  Additionally, based on a satisfactory assessment, to progress toward the completion of the quantitative research paper, which is a requirement for both the DBA and the PhD in Management: Designing Sustainable Systems programs.

Quantitative Research Paper

At the end of the fall semester of the third year, students will have completed a quantitative research paper. The objective of the quantitative research project is to generate a rigorous and valid quantitative empirical study that is guided by a hypothesized model of your variables or phenomenon of interest. The study must be framed by current theoretical and empirical work within the area of interest and the hypotheses must be based on appropriate causal logic.

A robust research design is utilized that follows the material covered in the quantitative research courses including collecting, analyzing, and validating data in a way that mitigates biases. Students complete a systematic and rigorous quantitative analysis and interpret the analysis in a way that provides novel insight to the phenomena of interest. The quantitative research paper details the project and is written in a manner that meets high scholarly standards to merit future publication in top-rated journals and\or other dissemination outlets.

Integrative Paper 

As a final requirement for the DBA program, an integrated dissertation document is required.  Students write a short overview statement introducing your qualitative and quantitative research studies, making substantive observations and conclusions about each study, and presenting a personal reflective statement about its significance to the author, scholarship and to practice. The initial research proposal is a preliminary way to frame the dissertation overview. Based on your experience of conducting the qualitative and quantitative studies, the final synthesis needs to be re-written, revised, and critically evaluated. The overview statement and the qualitative and quantitative research papers serve as the dissertation requirement of the DBA program.

DBA Dissertation

An original and significant endeavor, the DBA dissertation consists of the full integration of the qualitative and quantitative research paper as an integrative paper that provides an overview and organizes the study into a coherent thesis.

Additional Deliverables for PhD in Management

Although transdisciplinary research is the main focus of the PhD in Management: Designing Sustainable Systems program, candidates need to be grounded in a disciplinary field. Therefore, throughout your course of study, you’ll read seminal works and acquire knowledge that leads to a grounding in your chosen discipline (marketing, strategy, accounting, information systems, organizational behavior, finance, or economics). As a PhD student, you are required to take a comprehensive exam demonstrating adequate knowledge of the field's theories, research methods, and results. Upon passing the comprehensive exam, you’ll be advanced to candidacy for the PhD degree.

You will undertake dissertation research during your fourth year to extend your contributions to managerial knowledge. Informed by courses in design thinking, sustainability thinking, and complex systems thinking, you’ll incorporate human values and appropriate methods of analysis into your research. An original and significant endeavor, the dissertation includes a detailed review of the topic, relevant research questions, methods of inquiry used, findings obtained, and their implications.

Find more information in the General Bulletin.