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 (Mary Crossan, Cara Maurer, Krista Pettit, Michael Rouse, Glenn Rowe, Jean-Philippe Vergne, 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.

• 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