Doctor of Business Administration

Overview

The Doctor of Business Administration will help you develop an understanding of contemporary business issues and define an appropriate research question. It will enable you to plan your research realistically and to select, justify and implement appropriate ethical research methods in order to write a high quality dissertation. The program also incorporates a period of coursework, which enables you to master a range of relevant research approaches and methods, and provides you with up-to-date knowledge in the context of your chosen field of business.

Course Learning Outcomes

Students graduating from the Doctor of Business Administration will be able to: 

1. Demonstrate expert, specialised cognitive technical and research skills in a discipline area to independently and systematically generate original knowledge and understanding to make a substantial scholarly contribution to a discipline.
2. Critically reflect on, synthesise and evaluate a substantial and complex body of knowledge at the frontier of a discipline area.
3. Communicate research findings, explaining and critiquing theoretical propositions, methodologies, results and conclusions to peers and to the community.
4. Apply detailed knowledge of research, research integrity, ethics and the rights and safety of others, to plan and execute original research with intellectual independence and with full autonomy, authoritative judgement, adaptability and responsibility for personal outputs.

Course Structure

The DBA Program consists of 48 credit points of coursework and 102 credit points of research.

To progress to the research component of the doctoral program, you will be required to pass both the written and oral components of a comprehensive exam. The results of the exam will determine one of the three possible outcomes:

1. Progression to doctoral studies;
2. Progression to a Master of Business Research;
3. Exclusion from the remainder of the program.

You will be allowed a maximum of two attempts at the comprehensive examination. If you progress to the MBR program, you will undertake HDR 912 (48 credit points) instead of HDR 990 (96 credit points).

Variation to Course Structure