Doctorate of Business Brochure

School of Business & Technology

The DBA programme from the University of Gloucestershire is a professional doctorate for senior professionals looking to advance their careers by enhancing their leadership capabilities. The programme also assists those professionals wanting to develop their thinking and research skills to doctoral level across key contemporary management areas.

The DBA is recognized as an alternative to the traditional PhD doctorate and provides you with the highest possible academic qualification. Your research will make a unique and significant contribution to management practice, resulting in you being worthy of the Doctor title. As a DBA graduate, you will become even more prominent in your area of practice. This provides significant benefits to both to you and to your organisation, offering a pathway into senior levels of management in your sector of employment. Our DBA programme includes mandatory taught modules during the first part the course, supported by a series of webinars that prepare you in considerable depth for the empirical research that you will
undertake – often in the organisation where you are currently employed at a senior/executive level.

Duration: Minimum of 3 years*
Study mode: Full – time
Location: Gloucestershire UK
Entry requirement: Bachelor’s degree and an MBA or Master’s degree from accredited institutions,
IELTS: 6.0 overall (no less than 6.0 in writing and 5.5 in any other band or equivalent)

*maximum of 6 years

Programme Structure

Our Doctorate in Business Administration is a research degree. The programme starts with a pre-thesis modular phase which lasts, on average, 18 months, after which you present your formal research plan for approval, in an area focused on a topic of your choice.

You then enter the thesis phase, which lasts a minimum of a further 18 months. At its conclusion, you present and defend your thesis in viva voce.
The great benefit of this period of study is that you achieve an understanding and perception of practice and theory that cannot be attained by other means.

DBA classes are recruited in cohorts of around 10-20 participants who
benefit from a collaborative learning environment. The programme offers you a unique, innovative critical action learning method that encourages the development of your doctoral-level thinking, for you to reflect on both your research and your development as a doctoral practitioner.

Our research and practitioner skills will be enhanced by experiencing a unique approach to intellectual inquiry emphasizing the integration of theory and practice. Finally, you will earn a prestigious doctoral degree achieved through a rigorous, structured and comprehensive educational
experience.

The programme comprises of four core modules in the taught stage within the first 18 months. At the commencement of the programme, you are introduced to Reflective Professional Development. The module is designed to strengthen your ability to reflect on your business experience, research topic and broader contexts and develop your ability to analyse and synthesise the results of reflection.

You will be working in action learning sets to complement your independent learning. Leading on from this module, is the Systematic Literature Review, designed for you to engage systematically with a substantive body of relevant literature. Here, you will develop your skills in
critical analysis and evaluation of previous research work. The objective is to work towards developing your research question(s). You will also learn to synthesise and interpret complex information enabling the development of novel approaches, models and frameworks. The final module, Research
Methods and Analysis, explores the principle styles of research such as case study, survey and ethnography. It considers a variety of methods for generating data such as questionnaires, interviews, and observation, before highlighting analysis and synthesis approaches to apply to findings.

The programme structure is as follows in the first 18 months, supported by a series of webinars:
Reflective Professional
Development Systematic Literature
Review Methodological
Fundamentals Research Methods and Analysis
Then
Practitioners project – DBA thesis
of 50,000-60,000 words

Our programme is ranked 20th in the European Economic Committee’s Global DBA Rankings Euro 2018

Why study with us?

We treat everyone of our students as a person, not a number. Study here and you’ll be joining a close-knit, supportive community of staff and students who share your passions, academic interests and goals.

CONTACT US
International student enquiries
+44 (0) 3330 14 14 14
intoffice@glos.ac.uk