Structure and Courses of the PhD in Management
Conferral of the title of PhD depends on successful completion of academic courses as well as on successful defense of an original PhD dissertation.
In the first two years, students take a comprehensive set of doctoral courses taught by USI faculty members and invited lecturers who are recognized as leaders in their field of research.
At the end of the second year students have to develop and defend a PhD dissertation proposal.
The third, fourth and (eventually) fifth years are entirely dedicated to research and PhD dissertation development.
PhD dissertation may focus on any of a wide range of management-related research topics. Potential candidates are invited to consult research published in the leading management journals, especially those authored by the faculty of the institute, and reflect on whether they have a genuine interest for the research questions covered in these articles and the methodology implemented to provide an answer. These topics may include organizational learning, decision making, organizational survival and adaptation, intra- and inter-organizational networks, organizational status and identity, authority and power structures, organizational change and innovation, and others.
Following the list of the compulsory courses of the PhD programme in Management which students shall complete within the first 24 months of their PhD:
| Research Methods I
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This course introduces students to research methods commonly used by social scientists to study people, organizations, and markets.
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| Research Methods II
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The main goal of this course is to familiarize students with (agent-based) simulation modeling as a research method.
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| Econometrics
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The course exposes students to classic and advanced elements of Econometrics for research, with a strong mathematical focus.
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| Building Management Theories
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In this course students learn how to build social science theory, with a particular emphasis on the field of organization theory.
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| Social Networks and Organizations
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This course helps students discover new opportunities for reframing classic problems in organizational research in terms of relations among cases.
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| Strategy
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This course is designed to expose doctoral students to a broad foundation in strategy research, with the ultimate goal of explaining temporary and permanent performance differences between firms, within and across industries.
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| Advanced Topics in Management
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The course analyze recent developments in the Behavioral theory of the Firm (BTF) and Organizational Ecology (OE).
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| Micro-organization Theory
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This course introduces students to some of the traditional and more recent topics of research on the micro side of organizational theory.
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| Macro-organization Theory
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This course covers several theoretical perspectives on organizations and environments – e.g., institutional theory, organizational ecology and organizational evolution.
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| Management and Organization Seminars
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Students of the doctoral programme in management are expected to attend and actively participate the seminars run by the Management Institute.
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Students enrolled in the PhD programme also have an opportunity to attend elective courses from partner institutions in Switzerland and Europe. For instance our students had the opportunity to attend these courses (Link).
Students are also encouraged to spend a period abroad in their last years of their PhD studies to develop their dissertation. Prior students have taken this opportunity to visit leading universities worldwide such as New York University, University of Michigan and Stanford University, just to name a few.
