The Ph.D. Program - Management

Course Requirements:
Students have four sets of course requirements that they meet, in addition to successful passing of a preliminary exam and successful defense of a doctoral dissertation, in order to obtain a Ph.D.

These are:

Management Seminars
Students are required to take 18 hours of management seminars (6 courses) in the business school. Of these six, all management students are required to take the following seminars:

Organizational Behavior Seminar I
Strategy Seminar I
Organizational Research Methods I
Organizational Research Methods II

A variety of specialized seminars are also offered such as decision making, meta-analysis, organizational diversity, human resource management, advanced methodology, and groups and teams.

Research Methods/Statistics
Students are required to take at least 12 hours (4 courses) of additional statistics and/or methods courses. These courses are regularly offered in sociology, economics, and the psychology department. The Management Research I and II seminars do not count toward this requirement.

Outside Elective Courses
Finally, students are required to take at least four graduate level courses (12 hours) in a disciplinary area related to management, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, or political science. These courses should be relevant to the student's chosen track of study, organizational behavior or strategy.

Research Hours
Students are required to take at least 21 hours of independent research credit to either work on their dissertations or supervised research projects.

First Year Review
During the summer after their first year, students will be reviewed by all faculty from whom they've taken courses or worked with on research. Written and verbal feedback will be provided by the Ph.D. coordinator.

Preliminary Examination
This is a comprehensive examination in either organizational behavior or strategy. The preliminary examination is designed to test a student's ability to identify emerging issues in the field and to integrate them with the existing literature. Students must complete all required management seminar hours, statistics/methods hours, and 6 elective hours before taking the preliminary exam.

Admission to Candidacy
A student becomes a business Ph.D. candidate in the management concentration by:

• Successful completion of all coursework
• Passing preliminary examination in organizational behavior or strategy
• Receiving a recommendation for acceptance into candidacy by the Ph.D. program Director and the chair of the student's dissertation committee.

Doctoral Dissertation
By the beginning of the third year of study, a successful student will have achieved candidacy. The student must now select an acceptable thesis topic. Successful progress at this stage, more than any other, determines how quickly a student can complete the program.

With a topic or project agreed upon, the Ph.D. program director, student, and dissertation advisor will appoint at least three faculty members to serve as the dissertation committee. The dissertation committee determines whether a suitable topic has been chosen and the student has developed an acceptable dissertation proposal document. The student then presents his or her proposal in a proposal seminar, after which the committee specifies the requirements for the actual dissertation project.

The doctoral candidate will then provide committee members with a written dissertation which he or she will be required to orally defend to the dissertation committee.

Time Limits
Tulane requires that students complete their Ph.D. in seven years. After this time, students will be terminated from the program unless a special extension from the area coordinator and Dean is provided. In the management area, students will be evaluated and possibly terminated for insufficient progress if

• Students take longer than three years after entering the program to successfully pass their preliminary exam. For example, a student entering in Fall 2007, must take the exam no later than the end of Fall semester 2010.
• Students take longer than two years after they have passed the preliminary exam to successfully defend a dissertation proposal.
• Students take longer than three years after they have defended their dissertation proposal to defend their dissertation.

Students must remain continually enrolled in the Ph.D. program in order to defend their dissertation.