International University of Monaco offers online DBA for executives

The International University of Monaco (IUM) has announced it will offer an online Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA).

The offer comes in response to the demand from experienced professionals, who have at least five years’ work experience, wishing to take a step back from their ongoing professional activities and formalise their knowledge.

The intention of the DBA programme is to spawn a new generation of thesis which is not exclusively academic and is quite different from the classical PhD. Instead of providing a path to become a University professor, for example, the Executive DBA will, by virtue of the rich collaborative environment, generate new ideas and tools for analysis and reference frameworks that participants wouldn’t be able to produce alone in their ordinary working conditions.

“IUM’s DBA is executive oriented,” said Programme Director Hans Muhlbacher. “It links applied academic research with managerial practice. The programme provides an opportunity for executives to treat a managerial problem based on scientific methodology or to undertake a theoretically informed reflection about professional activities accomplished since the start of their career.”

Sylvie Faucheux, Member of the Programme’s Scientific Committee, said: “Internationally, there is an unsatisfied demand on the part of executives who already hold an MBA or a comparable Master degree and wish to capitalise on their experience through quality written work. For most upper level professionals, not having a doctorate poses no problem for their regular work activity. But more and more executives find themselves engaged in collaborative projects at an international level, for example, in Asia or in North America, where the great majority of their colleagues are holders of a doctorate.”

Candidates may wish to take a step back and take stock of the professional experience acquired to date or use the DBA for professional differentiation. In the contemporary employment context (notably in North America) where the MBA has become commonplace, holding a DBA-degree can be a mark of distinction both within one’s own employment situation and in the international job market. The IUM DBA can thus contribute to professional advancement and mobility.

This unique format melds professional and academic expertise, providing a twin focus to identify and resolve current and future challenges of the organisation or sector under study. Applied research leading to transferable results and recommendations for strategic and operative management are of central importance to the DBA work at IUM.

“In this sense the DBA programme and its outcomes are quite different from classical PhD programmes and research, which are characterised by an exclusively academic vision of quality,” said Hans Muhlbacher. “The IUM DBA programme is designed to be of functional significance to the practice of management. The entire doctoral work during the three-year program builds on the managerial experience of the participants paired with rigorous academic studies to reach an outcome of practical value as well as to make a contribution to our general knowledge.”

The teaching resources available online at IUM constitute a key success factor for the students of the DBA programme. These state-of-the-art tools allow the students to build learning communities and IUM to develop its teaching and support activities at a global scale.

Access to a multitude of systems of on-line research, teaching and learning resource materials including an “Electronic Briefcase” containing a comprehensive package of learning resources in digital formats, is provided to each DBA student. An ‘Intranet’ for the DBA Learning Community, accessible world-wide via the Internet, is also available.

“This DBA is perfectly aligned with IUM’s reputation for bringing knowledge to business and with the INSEEC Group’s know-how, it brings together research-professors and professional experts of the highest level,” said Jean Philippe Muller, Director General of IUM. “The whole of the INSEEC Group’s resources are at hand to support doctoral students wishing to resolve complex issues in their business or profession. This programme not only meets the needs of modern learning and training in top-level research, but also creates a successful bridge between the academic world and the professional world.”

The IUM DBA Programme, officially recognised by the State of Monaco, is set out over 3 years (36 months). The programme has a volume of 90 US credits (30 per year), equivalent to 180 ECTS.

The DBA is taught online with the structure of the programme being characterized by a series of on-campus meetings held twice a year in Monaco, online courses and relations with academic advisors who provide continuous guidance and support either individually or in small groups via email or video-conferences, and internet-based collaborative learning platforms.

Tuition fees are €33,000 for the 3-year programme.