The DBA: more than just an extension of the MBA, a new way of thinking about knowledge creation in management

Pierre-Jean Benghozi*

Emeritus Research Director, CNRS

École Polytechnique

*Member of the faculty of the Business Science Institute

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Since the creation of MBAs at Harvard in 1908, followed by Stanford in 1925, there has been a considerable increase in their number in recent decades. They can now be found all over the world, in a wide variety of public and private higher education institutions, and hundreds of thousands of MBA graduates are trained each year.

The MBA: a global success in search of meaning

This proliferation shows that, despite their significant cost of tens of thousands of euros, the programs met a real and significant demand for professional management training, similar to that of doctors or lawyers. However, this recent proliferation has been accompanied by an equally significant rise in criticism from a wide range of quarters, such as that expressed in Henri Mintzberg's seminal work [1].

This criticism is primarily related to the objective of providing rapid management training, which leads MBAs to deliver knowledge that is easily appropriated and operationalized because it is formatted, decontextualized, and often based on American or globalized cases. Graduates thus often appear to have a stereotypical view of management: short-term, KPI-focused, and prioritizing shareholders and profits at the expense of sustainability, stakeholders, and even ethics.

This framework has also led to a disconnect between the knowledge taught and reality: a disconnect from the concrete reality of organizations and the daily lives of managers, a disconnect from the real impact of the knowledge taught on business performance, a disconnect from the entrepreneurial challenges and skills highlighted by the recent technological wave, and a disconnect from the latest knowledge emerging from research.

However, the effectiveness and success of MBAs have enabled their graduates to access positions of responsibility, thereby contributing to the structuring of professional bureaucracies and a form of managerial elitism that is more capable of effectively meeting the expectations of executives and shareholders than of reflecting on the very objectives of management. The MBA has thus often become a rite of passage for any ambitious career.

Adjustments, of course, but not enough

These criticisms have led the institutions in charge of these programs to make significant changes. First, they adjusted the content of MBAs by incorporating issues such as sustainable development and inclusivity, social norms, and even the contributions of critical management. Second, they broadened the scope of these programs by adapting them and opening them up to experienced executives and managers through Executive Master's programs. These executive programs were aimed at executives whose training had ended too early or who felt the need to update their knowledge in a particularly fast-moving and changing economy.

By targeting experienced managers, these courses partially addressed one of Mintzberg's fundamental criticisms of management education: it is impossible to train students who, due to their age, with very few exceptions, have no organizational or practical management experience. Beyond the techniques to be applied, management knowledge often seems abstract, unnecessarily complicated or, conversely, trivial.

The DBA: an alternative based on experience and research

It is in light of these dynamics that it is interesting to look at the development and rise of DBAs currently being observed. At first glance, this movement may seem very similar to that of MBAs in recent decades. The current proliferation of DBAs responds to a need that echoes a real demand from practitioners keen to enrich or update their professional careers, as well as to take a step back and capitalize on their knowledge after several years of experience. It would be tempting to see this as a simple extension of MBAs, and therefore subject to the same criticism. These programs are accredited by the same certification bodies (AMBA), which were quick to recognize the opportunity to support and promote the development of such programs.

However, it would be inaccurate to view DBAs as simply “super MBAs” or “premium MBAs” supplemented by a thesis, or even to consider that an MBA is a prerequisite for any DBA. Admittedly, the DBA was also originally conceived at Harvard in 1953. But the aim was to offer experienced managers a training program modeled on doctoral or PhD theses to enable them to produce applied knowledge and influence management practices through research, while remaining rooted in the professional world. DBAs therefore represent a paradigm shift: moving managers from knowledge acquisition to knowledge creation.

Creating impactful knowledge: the ambition and unique requirement of the DBA

On closer inspection, DBAs are unique in that they respond immediately to many of the criticisms leveled at MBAs.

Firstly, by their very nature, they combine the theoretical knowledge and practical experience of doctoral students who are also managers. The relevance of the research topics and questions is validated from the outset, one might say, by the fact that these are precisely the questions that managers have encountered and to which they have been unable to find answers in management literature. The DBA programs for doctoral students who are managers are built around managerial issues that can only emerge through experience.

The DBA program and the production of a thesis consist of transforming these managerial issues into problems and (learning to) answer them through research and methodological rigor in terms of analysis, impactful knowledge, and recommendations. A DBA is therefore not simply a “professional thesis” or “second-rate thesis” that could also be offered as part of initial training: as Prof. Kalika points out, “a DBA without experience is heresy.”

By seeking to explore a management issue in depth through research, while keeping in mind the impact and actionability of the thesis results, DBAs inevitably connect with the most recent knowledge and insights that are not fixed but discussed and put into perspective. Moreover, it is not uncommon for DBA theses to lead to publications (books or articles) that bridge the gap between the academic and professional worlds.

Finally, a DBA is not based on an asymmetrical relationship between a professor and a student, as is generally the case in master's programs or PhD thesis supervision. On the contrary, it involves peer-to-peer support between a teaching and research professional (the thesis supervisor) and a business professional (the doctoral student-manager).

In conclusion, while the MBA remains a career accelerator in certain contexts, it is now suffering from the commoditization of these programs and has had to reinvent itself in response to the numerous criticisms of managerialism that it has faced. In this respect, the DBA is an intellectually demanding alternative that provides tailor-made training for managers who want to take a step back from their practice, learn how to respond to the managerial challenges they face on a daily basis, and produce knowledge that has an impact.

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[1] Mintzberg H. (2004), Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development, San Francisco : Berrett-Koehler Publishers