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Jon Bareham: Brighton Business School, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK
Tom Bourner: Brighton Business School, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK
Geoff Ruggeri Stevens: Brighton Business School, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to explore the recent development of professional doctorates in the field of business administration. Our aim is to identify the rationales offered by universities for their Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) programmes and also the intended learning outcomes of these programmes.
There is a reasonable level of consensus about the nature of the traditional PhD degree. It is a programme of study requiring an extended research investigation leading to a significant original contribution to knowledge and recorded in a written dissertation. By contrast, there is less agreement about the nature of professional doctorates. In 1995, Kay was able to say that there "seems to be as yet relatively little consensus about the core content of the DBA" (Kay, 1995, p. 112). Since that time the number of DBAs on offer has more than doubled but the need for more clarity about the nature of the DBA remains, not withstanding the fact that the Association of Business Schools (ABS) has published guidelines on the DBA (ABS, 1997).
It is important for the credibility of the DBA for there to be clarity about what the award stands for. The Harris Report argued that the "marketplace" needed coherence and clarity in the structure of postgraduate awards overall (Harris, 1996, p. 38). The need for coherence and clarity is also important for individual postgraduate awards. In this respect it was valuable for the ABS to express a view (ABS, 1997) but it is not the ABS that awards the DBA, it is individual institutions. For this reason it is important to be clear what the institutions offering the DBA believe it stands for. Moreover, it is not enough for each institution separately to have a clear view since the DBA title is not institution-specific. The reputation of the DBA within higher education and within the "marketplace" for DBA candidates is affected by other institution's programmes collectively. Each institution's DBA impacts on the value of the DBA qualification awarded by every other institution.
In this paper we intend to clarify what the...