Business Administration

Entry requirements

Months of entry

January, April, October

Course content

This PhD gives you the opportunity to explore issues at the frontier of research directly relevant to regional, national and global businesses. Today’s managers face dwindling consumer confidence, difficulties retaining talent and demand for greater social and environmental responsibility. We support you to create new insights and theories into the working world, in which your research could help leaders to navigate these challenges and shape theory, policy and practice in the fields of management studies and business analytics. Previous PhD student research has included:

• SME strategies in developed and developing countries
• internationalisation of businesses
• knowledge driven economy and impact on organisations

You study at Essex Business School (EBS), the largest department at the University of Essex, at our Southend Campus. We are a business school with an international outlook. Our doctoral students join us from all over the world and we are committed to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME).

Our Strategy, Operations and Entrepreneurship Group, based at our Southend Campus, are a group of international researchers with an entrepreneurial focus. The group organises regular research seminars, giving you the chance to hear cutting-edge research and how it is applied in business settings, as well as the opportunity to network with scholars from the School and the wider academic community.

The Group’s research is multi-disciplinary and falls within two broad and interrelated streams – management science and entrepreneurship and SME management. Current research projects include exploring “Autism and the world of work” – looking at the challenges faced by individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the workplace and how they can be offered better support and understanding; and “Accelerating women’s enterprise” – research in partnership with the Accelerating Women's Enterprise (AWE) project exploring the challenges and barriers faced by disadvantaged women entrepreneurs.

We encourage you to attend international conferences and you will have the opportunity to present your work at our PhD conference each year.

You can choose to study on a full-time or part-time basis, and we also offer an integrated (or 1+3) PhD Business Administration programme that provides a route to doctoral study in this area if you do not have a Masters degree, or only have limited research training. You may be eligible for a scholarship.