Ph.D./DBA in Strategy and Innovation or Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation

I am looking for an affordable, online, and accredited Ph.D./DBA in Strategy and Innovation or Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation program which I would like to pursue while working full-time. I would like to avoid the coursework, if possible, and go straight towards the dissertation or thesis phase. I already have an MBA in General Management which I also completed online while working full-time. Any help, guidance, or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

The only U.S. dissertation online program I know is at Capitol Tech, but it's not cheap. Also, to enter the dissertation phase, you have to transfer 42 credits. U.K. programs typically don't require coursework, but they aren't cheap. UNISA and other SA universities may have something close to what you seek.

I don't know what you mean by affordable since that word has a different meaning to different people. $200,000 may be reasonable to Aliko Dangote but $30,000 would be affordable to me.

 

There aren't too many dissertation-only programs in the U.S. Here's one of them.

https://www.uarts.edu/academics/phd-program

 

Just a quick note about dissertation-only programs: they're as long and as difficult as "taught" programs (coursework plus a dissertation). This can be for at least three possible reasons.

First, while there is no prescribed curriculum--and you're graded on your dissertation ("thesis" in the UK) alone, your advisor may decide you need to take one or more courses to prepare you for the experience. These might be in your subject area, related areas, research courses, etc. That's your advisor's call, and you won't know it until you're into your program. This will be "off-book" (not transcripted), and could occur at any time. This may be more likely if your program admits you as an MPhil student first, awaiting your "upgrade" to the PhD. You have to convince the school you're ready for the PhD.

Second, your advisor may require you to come to campus one or more times. This could be for meetings, symposia, classes, your viva, or whatever. No guarantees.

Third, the doctoral dissertation/thesis in "big book" PhD programs (not "taught") are typically twice as big. The word limits, when enforced, are more like 100K instead of 50-60K. More case studies, more hypotheses to test, more test subjects, more interviews, more of whatever it is that you're doing. And your contribution to scholarship is going to be bigger, too.

But these programs are reliable; they don't admit people unready to pursue the degree. There's no such thing as ABD, either, because there is no body of courses. It's all or nothing. (Well, not always true. If your thesis fails you might be offered a lower award.)

On "taught" programs in the US: I hate the ABD phenomenon, especially for working adults. So many people enter doctoral programs having no idea what is in store for them. So they spend 2 or 3 years doing what they already know about--taking courses--and then get slammed (BAM!) when faced with the totally unique dissertation. It's sad, wasteful, and hurtful. In "big book" PhD programs, you're not admitted to the program until you're demonstrably ready to do doctoral-level research. That's why some admit you to the MPhil first; they can always stop your process and award you that degree.

(In my Leicester program, I had a terrible time convincing them that the Chief Learning Officer (CLO) was (a) worth studying and (b) had a scholarly basis for doing so. Even though the DSocSci is titled like a professional degree, Leicester considers it a scholarly degree equal to the PhD. In fact, I asked what the difference was in the thesis for a PhD and one for the DSocSci if both were expected to make an original, significant, scholarly contribution. The answer: the thesis for the DSocSci is smaller. That was it! Smaller. It was really, really hard to get it all into the word limit. Anyway, to get them to let me study the CLO, I had to write a paper showing that it was a thing and could be the subject of scholarly research. The good news is that I won the argument--with a 25-page paper--and that I used almost all of it verbatim in my thesis.)

 

The University of the Arts is rather well-established. I really love the dissertation-only PhD's interdisciplinary approach. This gives the scholar access to theoretical and scholarly thoughts from a variety of disciplines and allows the degree candidate to bring them to bear in pursuing the dissertation subject. It would be important to find the scholarly fields relevant to the research topic and their underlying controlling theories.

By the time I went through Union, its interdisciplinary roots had been largely lost. We had to address the interdisciplinarity of our programs, but it was in the program summary, not the thesis, and it seemed bolted on instead of integrated. That doesn't weaken the work produced; instead it was a missed opportunity, on that the University of the Arts seems determined to capture and leverage.

Hypothetically, I could see someone doing a project that develops a new theory of leadership development, bringing in theories from leadership, human resource development, business, sociology, adult development theory, and others. I could see the result being a scholarly paper, a trade book, and a leadership development program that could be applied in corporate and organizational settings to prepare managers for the rigors and challenges of executive leadership.

Yeah. That would be cool.