What is DBA?

3515
What is DBA?
Professor in Information Systems,Technology and Innovation Management

Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS

Founding Director of emlyon Global DBA

Overview of the Program

The Founding Director of emlyon Global DBA, Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS flew all the way from France to China, for the emlyon Global DBA workshop and he teaches here emlyon Asia Campus


The emlyon Global DBA is a professional practice doctorate that emlyon offers in China and around the world. The program started in Paris in emlyon's campus, and had 16 students in the first class, mainly executives and individuals who have the aspiration to become a qualified doctor who can make a big contribution in terms of professional, company and local community development. It usually takes 4 years for a student to acquire the doctor degree. Sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it can be less. It is exceptional if someone finishes a doctor part time in less than 4 years.


According to Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS, the process is what the students want to reflect on their practice, on their management, on executive work they are doing in their companies, and learn from professors. In emlyon Global DBA, we have faculty with interests in all kinds of topics, from strategy, from entrepreneurship, from marketing and so on, and knowledge on how to improve the students' practice in terms of what they are doing in their work. Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS thinks that the main purpose of the emlyon Global DBA is to connect the people from industry with academic and research scholarship.



How to be Better Prepared for a DBA Experience?

Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS stresses that before coming to the program, the students should have quite significant management experience, meaning that they should have at least 10 years of being senior manager or playing a management function, and they should have an MBA or an executive MBA degree before they come for a DBA. Moreover, the DBA is a degree by research, so the prospective students should be able to conduct independent doctoral research, and have an intellectual curiosity about what they want to do in terms of their own DBA project.


And this is connected to what the emlyon Global DBA program looks for in the DBA candidates. We want a reflective practitioner. We want students who have critical ability to think and reflect about what they are doing in their own practice. Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS believes that this ability is very important for the DBA work, and the ability to learn and work independently in English is also very crucial.



Why a DBA Experience?

Many executives may have already had an MBA or EMBA experience. However, Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS believes that there are broad differences and similarities between an EMBA and a DBA degree. Like all EMBAs, DBA students are in the cohort, and they will be able to learn a variety of subjects. But in DBA, there is a cohort to facilitate the group and to learn from each other. Each student is doing his or her own project based on different topics. The students will have supervision from a supervisor team of professors either from Lyon, from other campuses of the emlyon, or from college faculty who maybe in China or elsewhere.


Moreover, according to Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS, if a person already has an MBA or an EMBA degree, DBA degree is not necessary. However, the candidates should have this intellectual curiosity as mentioned above, to be able to do research independently, and learn how to think critically about what she or he is doing for his or her work, which is a crucial ability to have in nowadays entrepreneurs in the uncertain environment. Knowledge is the most important resource in most places in the world. Therefore, to be able to think critically, how to learn and accumulate knowledge, and produce new knowledge for the company and career is crucial, which is what emlyon try to achieve with a DBA.


Another crucial ability the DBA students will have upon graduation is the profound knowledge in research methodology, which is also crucial in the success of their career. And the reasoning behind this statement, according to Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS is that there is a big discussion going on between 'rigor and relevance debate' we need while we add research projects to have their research design, knowledge about the methods. This is where Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS thinks the academia adds value in terms of the work that these people are doing, because our professors, our faculty and our workshops, our seminars, all the work that the academia is doing to develop the research capability of these candidates, is to make the DBA students researchers, not only people who can solve problems in terms of their job. Good doctor candidates should know how to deploy good research design and good methods to collect data, analyze data and write valid research, so that they can produce new knowledge for their companies, for themselves, and for their project.


Moreover, the supply of DBA degree is limited in terms of professors who are capable of supervising these students who are executives with significant experience and intellectual curiosity. In this knowledge society, it's very important for people to have their ability to think critically and learn how to produce and accumulate, absorb new knowledge for their business, for their companies, for their own careers.



What is the Current DBA Like?

Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS enjoys being part of the group, because he learns as much as he hoped the students would learn. For him, China is so fascinating and it has been a privilege for him to come to China and work here. And there is a diverse student body, as suggested by the name of the program“emlyon Global DBA". The students learn from these interactions with other students from different countries. This cross-country interaction, crossing boundaries, also discipline boundaries is very important in terms of having different perspectives from different disciplines. Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS thinks the most important thing is to create a learning community of people who do their individual project and then advance collectively as a group.


In terms of the characteristic of the research topics, Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS points out that there are difference between the DBA students' topics and those of the PhD students. DBA students know better than the PhD students what make sense in terms of studying for the organizations. The DBA students sometimes have about specific topics like we have some people who are interested in art management, in museums, in art collections. We have other people who are interested in business schools as you know, and the business of business schools and how we can improve this. There are other people who come from industry and they have all kinds of interests in terms of strategy or marketing, or entrepreneurship, it’s more about business research. We try to help all these different candidates to do their projects in a timely manner. This is very important because sometimes they don’t realize how much work is required to do a doctoral thesis, and how to do it in the timely manner within 4 years. It is a talent, with other commitment they may have.



The Relationship between Teaching and Learning

Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS came to China for the first time in 2002, and it was a different China back then. A lot of the changes have to do within the nationalization of Chinese and globalization of Chinese business. When he was first here, people were talking about innovation, RND from Europe or from America to China. Now, everyone is talking about reversing innovation from the bigger Chinese companies in a sense that these Chinese companies can teach companies from other countries on how to innovate. From some of the students' redact, Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS and the students have published together, and have written books together about how important is the Chinese way to do this kind of research, development and innovation for the world today. And Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS thinks China has gained quite a lot of things from these kind of programs, like the emlyon Global DBA. Nowadays Chinese research starts to contribute back to academia right, which is the objective of DBA. 



What is EDAMBA?

Professor Dimitris G. ASSIMAKOPOULOS serves as a president for an EDAMBA program, which is a European doctoral program association in management and business administration. EDAMBA was established more than 25 years ago, exactly for the purpose of creating a community of directors, of doctoral programs to come together across different countries in Europe. Now there are campuses in about 30 countries from all over the world including created Latin America campuses. And Tongji University is the first Chinese institution from the PhD program. Faculties meet and discuss about how to enhance the quality of doctoral programs, and how to create tenders within the community.


It is also interesting how the emlyon Global DBA participants leverage the EDAMBA resources during their DBA journey. There is the summer school in EDAMBA for doctor students. They can participate the summer academy. The students can network, they can meet other students from top institutions, and EDAMBA has more than 60 doctoral programs from top universities around the world. Different campuses send their students or if they come, they will see that we have this network. There are also networks that facilitate their networking and collaboration in the community. For doctor students, there is the thesis competition. For the people who have competed their thesis, they can come and participate for praise, and there are all kinds of activities that EDAMBA is doing for the students but also for the program directors, for the supervisors and so on.




写点评
4已赞
相关活动