Preface

This book contains advice offered by Executive DBA graduates to students, and in particular those who are working in parallel to their doctoral education. It is divided into seven parts, with short but detailed chapters that give guidance on how to successfully complete the different stages of the doctoral process. Each chapter follows the same structure: 1) a specific question that typically might be raised by a doctoral student is presented, 2) a few key words are given to describe the content of the chapter, 3) a specific piece of advice is discussed in the body of the text. At the end of the book, we present some suggested background reading that may help the doctoral student to explore the topics covered in the chapters in greater depth. This book results from a series of meetings that take place each year during the International Week organised by Business Science Institute in Luxembourg. Since 2016, graduates from Business Science Institute have been meeting DBA students during workshops to share their knowledge and experiences of the doctoral journey. From this initiative, two observations can be made. On the one hand, DBA student-managers seek to understand the mechanisms of research in order to produce knowledge from their considerable professional experience. On the other hand, after completing their thesis, DBA graduate-managers seek to pass on the knowledge produced through their doctoral research. This mainly involves sharing it with their professional network, for example through specialist publications, seminars or media appearances. Their desire to disseminate knowledge was indeed the driving force behind the writing of this pioneering book.