A Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) is widely recognized as a prestigious qualification as a professional doctorate in Business and Management. It is considered one of the highest level of qualification available in professional management. Hence, the DBA degree program is designed for professionals who want to further their career with the most advanced business program offered at the Graduate School of Management and Economics at PUC. This program addresses learning needs and objectives of senior business managers, consultants and university professors. Its primary objective is to produce graduates who can contribute to the advancement of their professions and to the expansion of knowledge and awareness of the contemporary strategic issues and practices.
Our curriculum has a three-tiered focus. Students examine current theories, practices, and issues in business; train in research methods; and study the relationships between business and social and global issues. At PUC, we believe that doctoral students must be adept in all these areas to be successful contributors to the expansion of knowledge and improvement of business practices. For the dissertation, students conduct original research on a topic of current importance and personal interest. The dissertation should impact and help illuminate the strategic issues that they are challenging in their professions.
Additionally, the program encourages students to accept the added responsibility of a shared commitment to the advancement of their professions and to upholding the highest ethical standards in the private or public sector. The program provides an optimal combination of courses/taught modules in the applied statistics, research methodology, advanced international business, advanced managerial economics, advanced international entrepreneurship, advanced organizational behavior, and advanced operation management.

Doctor of Business Administration

Course Description

RESR 704        Research Methodology

This course is designed to provide students with the principles of scientific method and techniques of research design to both qualitative and quantitative research methods, including sampling methods and data collection techniques. In this course, students will examine epistemological issues in social science and business research, and then explore the foundations for choosing methods and techniques in applied business research. This will allow students to demonstrate knowledge of the qualitative and quantitative methodologies underpinning business research. Students will develop and extend the skills required for successful doctoral research, including choosing statistical techniques, awareness of the use of research software, case studies, ethnography, and surveys, as well as ethical issues in business research, and the influence of ethical considerations on research methods, methodology, and doctorate level technical writing.

STAT 705        Applied Statistics

This course is designed to broaden and enrich the student's knowledge and understanding of the science of collecting, organizing, and interpreting numerical data statistical methodology as it pertains to the study of multivariate techniques used in the behavioral sciences. The goal of this course is to develop skills with a range of procedures and programs for multivariate data analysis and the science of collecting, organizing, and interpreting numerical data. The focus will be on practical issues such as selecting the appropriate analysis, preparing data for analysis, menu-driven and syntax programming, interpreting output, and presenting results of a complex nature.

MGT 710        Advanced Organizational Behaviors

This course covers the foundation for the study and application of organizational behavior. The perspective, historical background, methodology and theoretical framework for human behavior in organizations are studied. Attention is given to the micro perspective (perception, personality and attitudes, motivation, and learning), the dynamics (group dynamics, conflict, stress, power and politics, and leadership), and organizational culture. Applications for performance improvement, organizational change, and development are stressed. The course is not a cut-and-dry approach to organizational behavior but, instead, is based on the assumption that more than one perspective in organizational behavior may be more appropriate. 

ECON 720      Advanced Managerial Economics

This course is designed to provide students with application of statistical methods, and advanced economic analysis of consumer theory, production theory, exchange, and market interactions as well as economic theory to managerial decision making. A range of analytical tools is covered, useful in solving problems that arise in managing firms' operations. Particular cases include regression analysis, linear programming, forecasting, time value of money, break-even analysis, statistical quality control, pricing, production, and demand and cost functions.

BUS 710          Advanced International Entrepreneurship

The theoretical foundations of the course will lie in theories on managerial aspects of entrepreneurship; the course also provides an introduction to the opportunities and challenges of entrepreneurship and innovation from an international perspective through lectures and guest speakers with international experiences. The course focuses on the need for every entrepreneur and innovator to understand the global market in today's hypercompetitive world. Students will learn how to design a business to compete effectively in an international context and to apply their learning by developing an actual business plan.

BUS 715          Advanced International Businesses

An advanced international business course explores the implications of global economic integration in a world of national differences, focusing on corporations and business global firms that operate in several countries. The emergence of a world economy has also produced unparalleled opportunities to test theories developed in a single national border relative to other trading nations. The course examines the growth of the multinationals and international trade theories linked to practical cases differing from country to country. It also deepens an understanding of basic human behavior and is to find out practical world business elevating real academic value relevant to the disciplines of politics, business, economics, psychology, and sociology. Due to the fact that the world has become more and more open in terms of economics, politics and culture, students can pursue their research studies in countries with widely divergent cultures, economic systems and political institutions so as to broaden their understanding and knowledge in international business.

MGT 720        Advanced Operation Management

This course is designed to acquaint students with the concepts, models, and theories relevant to the management of the processes required to provide goods or services to consumers in both the public and private sectors. This course includes production, inventory and distribution functions, scheduling of service or manufacturing activities, facility capacity planning and design, location analysis, product design and choice of technology. The methodological basis for the course includes management science, economic theory, organization theory, and management information system theory.

PAP 799          Professional Memoire (Doctoral Research Paper Writing)

By definition, anyone can write a memoir (a narrative composed of personal experience). Student who write memoirs make a conscious decision to put their narrative on paper to share experience of student’s job or used to knowledge.

RESR 799       DBA’s Dissertation Proposal Development

(Dissertation Research Design, Review of Literature, and Proposal Defense)

This workshop focuses candidates on development of well-defined research questions, appropriate methodology approaches, outline of hypotheses, and elucidation of the importance of the research topics.  It will also introduce candidates to the development of well-defined data collection strategy, including but not limited to analyzing archival data, designing the survey to be used or determining how to use existing organizational changes in a quasi- experimental design to assess phenomena.  The session will also focus on the development of the literature review section that will be included in the dissertation, including the final presentation of the dissertation proposal.

RPD 798 & 799 Publications writing (for national and international publications)

This course will enable the DBA candidates to become more effective researchers and be more successful in getting their manuscripts accepted by its quality in the national and international professional journals and publications, or peer-reviewed journals, whether they are international or national titles and regardless of who publishes them.  The course supports both increased research outputs and higher-quality submissions for journal publications.  

SFP 798           Seminar on Professional Business Issues (Conference Paper Presentation)

The seminar on professional business issues and candidate to be an effective conference paper presenter and conference papers to be produced by students in this seminar and can be an effective way to try out new ideas, introduce students to work to colleagues, and improve your research questions. This course will enable students to present their professional papers in a conference and will be a great opportunity for gaining valuable feedback from a community of scholars and for increasing their professional stature in your field. Producing at least a conference paper is the final requirement of the course, which are often both a written document and an oral presentation of the candidate.  Students will be asked to submit a copy of their paper to a commentator or adviser before they are allowed to present at the conference. Thus, the paper to be completed by the students should follow the conventions for academic papers and oral presentations.

SFP 799           Seminar on Current Research Topic (Academic Seminar for DBA Dissertation)

This course is a practical and theoretical introduction to scholarly writing at the dissertation level and beyond. This seminar is normally required of all DBA students have to provide information and guidance on the proposal and dissertation writing process. The seminar provides a forum for dissertators to circulate work in progress for feedback, and to discuss issues that arise in their work, which will be based on current topics or issues in business.

RESR 705       Seminar in Doctoral Dissertation Development

                        Seminar is intended to assist doctoral students in the preparation of a dissertation proposal and to facilitate the transition from course work to dissertation. This course will review of proposal components, with particular emphasis on research design and developing the literature review, and will also focus on key issues such as dissertation format standards, psychological and time management demands, committee formation, and project management. This course does not aim to provide additional substantive material or methodological toolkit, the way typical graduate courses do. Its goal is rather modest as it attempts to apply your cumulative understanding and skills to specific research situation. From the perspective of one’s program of study, however, this course poses a real-world test helping to make a realistic transition from coursework to dissertation.

FIN 710           Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management

The course is provided student more advanced idea and technique in corporation and personal financial decision making. We will focus on tolls and methods IPO, Security trading, Risk and return concept then we will examine modern portfolio theory, Capital asset pricing model, Asset allocation, Multi-Factor Models and the Arbitrage Pricing Theory, including market efficiency and behavioural finance, Bond and Stock valuations, and then Option and Future Markets. The ability to implement and apply these techniques in practice is regarded as achieve target of the course. Hence, the students will learn to deal with real business financial cases and they will learn how to use Microsoft Excel (VBA) to analyse risk and return of portfolio management.

ECON 710      Advanced Macroeconomics

The course is to provide a basic understanding of the theoretical foundation of macroeconomics at the advanced level. There are two aspects to these foundations. First, the course emphasizes the dynamic general equilibrium character of modern macroeconomic analysis. For dynamic general equilibrium modeling, we adopt the overlapping-generations model as the dynamic model to model the macro economy. Second, we use a consistent approach based on microeconomic foundations and the rationality of economic agents to address several issues in monetary policy, exchange-rate policy and fiscal policy

MGT 711        Supply Chain Management

This course focuses on the application of management science techniques to model the newest emerging supply chain planning problems (such as reverse logistics, integrated production, inventory and distribution problems, multi-partner pricing analysis, supply chain distribution network design, location analysis and transportation capacity planning, etc.) to meet the changing needs of new generations of our Ph.D. students. The course also focuses on the processes of developing new search algorithms and error bound analysis to effectively solve such practical business decision and optimization problems. Academic researchers and selected industry executives will be invited to the classroom to present the pipeline research results and new challenges encountered in supply chain management practices

ECON 715      Advanced Microeconomics

This course covers several microeconomic topics taught at the advanced level. It will provide a solid microeconomic foundation for the students for their future research in different fields in economic theory. The prerequisites of this course consist of intermediate microeconomics and a strong background in mathematics. Topics include the theory of consumer, demand and supply, game theory, competitive markets and market failure; externalities and public goods; adverse selection, moral hazard; principal-agent problem and general equilibrium theory.

FIN 716           Advanced International Finance

This course provides an in-depth study of issues and tools that will assist financial managers in making decisions. Topics include capital budgeting under uncertainty; long-term sources of funds; capital structure; dividend policy; special financing and investment decisions; futures, forwards, options, and swaps; treasury risk management; financial planning; as well as long-term planning and strategic issues in finance. Also, the course is to expose students with various theoretical models of exchange rate determination, the balance of payments, financial crisis and open economy macroeconomics, as well as their respective empirical studies. Students are advised to read supplementary readings to relate what they have learnt to current issues at hand. In particular, the issues of global imbalances, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and Debt Crisis in Europe will be discussed in depth in the course.

MGT 740        Advanced Quantitative Analysis for Management

The course focuses on the design and implementation of decision support systems based on optimization models. The course objective aims to provide development of modeling skills, practice in the application of operations research techniques, experience with state-of-the-art software, and the study of decision support systems design and management. Topics include linear, integer, network, nonlinear, multi-objective, and stochastic optimization models for manufacturing, logistics, telecommunications, service operation, and public sector applications.

FIN 774           Advanced Financial Markets

This course provides students with an overview of the basic contributions in to the modern theory of corporate finance and financial institutions. The topics covered may include capital structure, distribution policy, financial intermediation, incomplete financial contracting, initial and seasoned public offerings, market for corporate control, product market corporate finance interactions, corporate reorganization and bankruptcy, financing in imperfect markets, security design under adverse selection and moral hazard, swaps, gap analysis, and, long-term investment decision of financial institutions in the context of market globalization. The course examines monetary policy and the central bank, the flow of funds in the economy and interest rate determination. Financial intermediaries are examined with particular attention to their regulations, the composition of their assets and liabilities, and their changing relative importance. Investment funds and pension funds are included among the intermediaries. Due attention is given to current developments in financial markets.

RPC 799          Dissertation

This applied dissertation research course focuses on the candidates to complete the dissertation and after completion and approval of the Dissertation Chair to submit it for final defense before the Doctoral Dissertation Comm