Strategy

Strategy is concerned with creating and defending an organization’s competitive advantage in changing environments. To be successful, organizations must leverage and renew their resources, competencies and leadership skills, sometimes in multiples industries at the same time. Such organizations are able to survive longer, perform better, and elicit favorable evaluations from their stakeholders, thereby shaping how industries change over time.

The faculty (Bob Andersen, Oana Branzei, Mary Crossan, Cara Maurer, Krista Pettit, Glenn Rowe, Lee Watkiss, and Mark Zbaracki) and doctoral students of the Strategy group at Ivey engages these wide-ranging phenomena in their research, course development, and teaching by drawing on multiple disciplines, including economics, psychology, political science, and sociology. The goal of this engagement is to advance the academic study of strategy and related disciplines while helping managers to improve their strategic decisions. Their research is published in top management journals including Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal.

The program emphasizes a strong foundation in strategic theory, research methods, and statistics. Students are exposed to both classic and recent scholarly work in order to expose them to the key paradigms, to help them to build mental models of different theoretical perspectives, and to develop a keen appreciation of the interconnectedness of the different research streams in the field of strategic management.

During the first two years of the program, students take a set of complementary courses in strategic management theory at the business-unit, corporate, and global levels, organizational theory, and others drawn from across the social sciences. Students also take a series of research methods courses including statistical and econometrical techniques as well as the option to take qualitative methods courses. Other aspects of the program are tailored to fit the student’s own research and teaching interests.

Throughout the doctoral program, students engage in research both independently and in collaboration with faculty. Between the second and third years of the program, students complete a major, independent, empirical research project. All students are encouraged to present their research at academic conferences as well as to submit articles to top-tier research journals for peer review. Students graduate as creative, independent scholars with the skills necessary to conduct cutting-edge research in the field of strategy and related disciplines.

The doctoral program in Strategy is designed to produce scholars. We train our graduates to become academics in a university setting. We aim to produce researchers and teachers. If your interest is consulting, industry, or other non-university sector employment, you would be better to pursue an MBA or MSc degree.

*Please note that Strategy is a stream under General Management

PhD Student Opportunities

The doctoral program in Strategy is recruiting students with the following research interests.

Professors Mark Zbaracki and Lee Watkiss are recruiting PhD students with an interest in how choices get made in organizations. We gather archival data and data from interviews and interactions with managers to study how organizational decision-making processes change across context and time. We focus in particular on how experience and politics shape choice. We welcome PhD students to join our research group and contribute to a number of new projects. Specifically, we are looking for students to help us:

• Explore how people create the situations they work in and how those situations then shape choices;
• Consider how managers make sense of the complexity and ambiguity of decisions their companies face;
• Create novel theory into how actors manage coalitions and sub coalitions to shape the outcomes of organizational choices.

Professor Mary Crossan is recruiting a PhD student interested in focusing on leader character, organizational learning and strategic renewal. My research is not limited by discipline boundaries. My ultimate interest is to contribute to research and practice on the drivers of sustained excellence in organizations and ultimately society. This pursuit has led me into the areas of organizational learning for strategic renewal, improvisation as it relates to strategic agility, and more recently the foundational role of examining the strength of character (e.g. courage, humility, humanity, transcendence, drive, integrity, etc.) as it relates to both individual well-being and sustained excellence in organizations. I am a Distinguished University Professor at Western, which is Western’s highest honour recognizing sustained excellence in research, teaching and service. I have an excellent track record working with doctoral students, and collaborate with many Ivey faculty and faculty around the world in my research endeavors. Sample publications:

• Pettit, K.; Crossan M. “Strategic renewal: Beyond the functional resource role of occupational members”, Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming
• Crossan, M.; Byrne, A.; Seijts, G. Reno, M.; Monzani, L., Gandz, J.: “Toward a Framework of Leader Character in Organizations” Journal of Management Studies, vol. 54 (7) 986-1018, January, 2017.
• Crossan, M.; Lane H.; White, R.E. “An Organization Learning Framework: From Intuition to Institution”; Academy of Management Review; vol. 24, no. 3, 522-537,1999. (received the decade award from AMR in 2009 as the most highly cited paper in the prior decade)

Professor Bob Andersen is recruiting PhD students with an interest in the inter-relationship between inequality, diversity and business. Although most of my own research is quantitative, I am also open to supervise qualitative projects. In terms of specific topics, I am interested in working with students who would like to explore: a) The role that firms have played in the increase in income inequality over the past few decades (and especially cross-national differences); b) How inequality and diversity within firms affect productivity and/or innovation; and c) How cross-national differences in economic and political conditions influence organizations’ strategy.

• View our Google Scholar Page
• View the Research Database

PhD Graduates

Strategy is one of five possible specializations within Ivey’s General Management PhD program. The Strategy specialization is designed for those interested in pursuing academic careers at top business schools in Strategy, Management, or Organization departments.

Dr. Ying-Ying Hsieh (2018 PhD)

Assistant Professor, Imperial College Business School

 

Dr. Chethan D. Srikant (2016 PhD)

Assistant Professor, California State University