Management PhD

Programme

Qualifications and durations

Available to study full or part-time.

The Bath PhD

As a world-class, research-led School of Management, we have designed our academically-oriented PhD programme specifically to train the next generation of professional management researchers and scholars.

We seek to attract and fully train exceptionally qualified and strongly motivated individuals from around the world who want to excel in careers as professional management analysts and academics.

Our goal is to train tomorrow’s leading management scholars by ensuring all our PhD candidates graduate with both the formally recognised training and the practical research and teaching experience needed to succeed in the increasingly competitive international market for jobs in professional management research and scholarship.

In addition to providing the advantage of Bath’s excellent world-wide reputation for management research, we achieve high marketability for our PhD graduates through a programme that:

• Provides all PhD candidates with a comprehensive taught training in management research methods that earns the award of a Master in Research degree after the first year of registration
• Enables PhD candidates to work closely with our international faculty on original scholarly research at the frontiers of management knowledge
• Actively encourages PhD candidates to present and publish their scholarship before they graduate
• Offers the possibility for PhD candidates to gain both teaching training and some direct teaching experience

With these four elements of the Bath PhD, your success in a career as a management scholar is assured a world-class foundation in excellence.

Entry criteria

We regard our PhD programme as an investment in the future of our profession of scientific enquiry into management, so we welcome applications from those with the determination and ability to join the first rank of professional management researchers and academics. Our policy is to admit the best and most promising applicants based on their intellectual ability, academic achievements, and motivation to undertake the professional scholarly research training we offer on the Bath PhD programme.

We seek applications from outstanding individuals from anywhere is the world and from any disciplinary background who are strongly committed to and potentially capable of high-quality academic research in any of the disciplinary areas covered by the Subject Groups of the School and who:

• Have, or expect to receive before September of the year of entry, exceptionally good academic qualifications in any discipline.
• Are fluent in reading and, especially, writing English.

Exceptionally good academic qualifications are required. These are evidenced by high GRE or GMAT scores, or high GPAs, or high degree classifications, or similar. All applicants must hold at a minimum a first degree award at First or Upper-second (or GPA equivalent) level before final acceptance.

Prior academic disciplines studied are less important than demonstrable quality of academic achievements and a willingness to undertake systematic research training, including both qualitative and quantitative methods training, as well as specific disciplinary training as necessary. We therefore welcome applications from any disciplinary background regardless of whether or not applicants have already taken a master degree. Our emphasis is primarily on intellectual ability and motivation to become a professional management scholar.

Applicants who have taken GRE or GMAT and achieved high scores will be very greatly advantaged in the admissions process. The advantage of having taken GRE or GMAT applies to candidates from any disciplinary or national background.

English language requirements

Taking the taught elements of our PhD programme and writing up original research to an internationally successful standard demand a high degree of fluency in English. For non-native English speakers, we normally requires a score of at least 7 in the IELTS test administered by the British Council, or a TOEFL score of 250 (computer-based) or 600 (written). Please note that these are the minimum requirements, with higher ability generally expected.

In some cases students may be made an offer of a place that is conditional on successful completion of one of the pre-sessional English language courses offered by the University's English Language Centre.

Academic references

One academic reference is required. If you graduated a long time ago and think you will have difficulties providing a reference, please contact the department.

Funding opportunities

The School of Management funds a number of students every year through research council studentships and other sources of funding. See our website for further information.

Contact

Chris Barnes, Research Administrator

Email phdinfo@management.bath.ac.uk
Tel +44 (0) 1225 386714
Fax +44 (0) 1225 386473
Web www.bath.ac.uk/management/phd

Fees

See the Tuition Fees Schedule.

Our Research

Research at the School of Management

We are a leading international centre for management research. This is reflected in our rating in the RAE 2008 which places us 5th in the UK, equal to Oxford and LSE. We have been consistently ranked in the top ten in Europe for research in the Financial Times MBA rankings.

The School of Management provides a strongly supportive, vibrant research culture, developed through the provision of internal resources, research grants and awards. We are committed to growth in order to embrace new areas of management research and to reinforce existing strengths.

Our research culture

Our research is structured around six issue-based Subject Groups, which span functional disciplines. These groupings contain cross-functional Research Centres, which focus and formalise our major research initiatives. Teaching is organised within functional or disciplinary subject groups.

Our six Subject Groups are:

Accounting and Finance
Business, Society and Business Economics
Information, Decision and Operations
Marketing
Organization Studies
Strategic and International Management

Our research programmes are:

• The Bath PhD
• DBA in Higher Education Management
• Engineering Doctorate

About the Department

A highly ranked business school

During the past 40 years we have established ourselves as one of Europe’s leading business schools. The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) puts us in an impressive position of 5th in the UK for management research, confirming the world-class standing of our faculty.

We are currently ranked 1^st for Business, 1^st for Accounting and Finance and 1^st for Graduate Jobs in Business, and our MSc in Management is ranked 7^th in the UK by the Financial Times, making it one of the best programmes of its kind. The Bath MBA is listed among the top MBA programmes in the world, currently ranked 2nd in the UK and in the world's top 25 (Economist's Which MBA? 2012).

The Bath Advantage

Our combination of world-class research combined with a unique emphasis on real-world learning makes Bath an outstanding place to study. We are an elite institution, but also friendly and caring. We take pride in our heritage as one of the UK’s oldest business schools set in a beautiful historic city and we value the quality of life enjoyed by students and staff in a small, safe but vibrant university.

You will be taught by people who are discovering the new ideas that have not yet reached the textbooks, and then you can test these theories out in organisations around the world.

All our programmes provide far more than a valuable business qualification. They give you a recognised and proven head start in an increasingly competitive job market.

Graduates in Demand

Ranked 1^st for Graduate Jobs in Business (Sunday Times University Guide 2013), our graduates have an excellent track record of getting jobs. Recent statistics show that 86% of our UK and EU MSc students were in employment six months after graduating. What’s more, 40% of those graduates are in professional jobs compared to 25% nationally.

Our emphasis on education for the real world ensures that our graduates are consistently targeted by leading companies. Some of the many organisations which employ our graduates in the UK and overseas include:

Accenture, American Express, Arcadia Group, Barclays Bank, BP, British Airways, BT, Commercial Bank of Greece, Deloitte, Dell, Department of Trade & Industry (DTI), Dyson, Electricité de France, Ernst & Young, GlaxoSmithKline, Greenpeace, Gulf International Bank, Hayes Montrose, IBM, Intel, John Lewis Partnership, JP Morgan, Kleinwort Benson, KPMG, Legend Group (China), Lever Fabergé, Lloyds Banking Group, Marks & Spencer, Mars, Motorola, National Health Service (NHS), Nestlé, Nomura International, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Procter & Gamble, Renault (France), Royal Air Force, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sainsbury’s, Shell, Syntegra, Vauxhall, Ventura, Zurich.