Origins

In 1991, a group of directors of doctoral programmes in management from European business schools, using land mail to communicate, decided to launch EDAMBA as a network to exchange their practices and foster their reflections on the future of doctoral education. In 2011, the association held its 20th annual meeting at ESADE business school (Barcelona).


Doctoral education is becoming a global activity. To train the millions of managers which the fast economic growth everywhere requires, old and new universities and schools over the planet need teachers with doctorates. This new trend imposes a thorough revision of the role of European universities and schools in doctoral education and research. Moreover, in the next two decades the technology will allow creating and disseminating knowledge in totally new ways, modifying deeply the nature of competition and collaboration among the research and education institutions.

 
 
 
EVOLUTION OF EDAMBA ACADEMIC PROGRAMMES
 
Hans Siggaard Jensen
Aarhus University
Honorary President of EDAMBA
and
Dimitris Assimakopoulos
Professor at EMLYON, France
President of EDAMBA
 
 
1.1 The EDAMBA Summer Research Academies
 
When EDAMBA was founded in 1991 at a meeting in Stockholm it was from the beginning clear that it would have several types of functions. One was the exchange of experience and thoughts on running doctoral programs in business studies another the task of furthering cooperation on doctoral education on the European scene. But it was also clear that EDAMBA should itself try to do some of the things that doctoral programs do. One was the function of organizing a European summer school in its area. Many European scientific organizations organized summer schools. Some also made these target doctoral students. So it was natural to try to organize an EDAMBA summer school. I made an application to the European program SPES – Stimulation Program in Economic Science - for support for a summer school in the fall of 1991 and was successful in getting a grant that would make it possible for three years to invite lecturers and support travel and staying expenses for doctoral students. The idea had been circulated already at the founding conference in Stockholm and Patrick Sercu from KU Leuven had said that they would be willing to house the summer school – as they already housed manysuch events during summers at the university. Facilities were thus available and the university could also provide local organizing support. What was needed was a concept for the summer school. Should it be run with lectures on various subjects, should it be more of a doctoral consortium where students presented  their projects for discussion or what? Should there be a central theme or subject or should it be broad? There were several discussions among the members of the executive committee and Tom Elfring from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University and I did the actual final organizing. We ended up with the format consisting of the following parts. The focus of the summer school would be methodological and on the philosophy of science aspects of doctoral education in business.There would be both faculty presentations and student presentations with discussion. The participants should come from all areas of the business and management research field and thus create an opportunity for doctoral students to meet with other doctoral students with different
specialization. Thereby the EDAMBA summer school would be different from other offerings focusing more narrowly on the various special areas of business and management – like strategy, organization, marketing, accounting, finance etc. – and also from pure doctoral consortiums – mostly again with narrow focus – and courses with training in various research methodologies. It was decided to let only a limited number of the participating students present their project for analysis and discussion. Thus participants should when applying, submit a description of the methodological and philosophical issues in their research projects. It was also decided that the summer school should be fairly short but highly concentrated. So the length was set at 5 days. The program presented overviews of the methodological situation in business research presented by among other Richard Whitley from the Manchester Business School. It also consisted of fairly extensive presentation and discussion of selected projects by the doctoral students.
 
The venue of the summer school was a basement in the university in Leuven. Students stayed in a student dormitory and faculty in a hotel. Students were issued meal coupons so that they could eat at the many restaurants in Leuven. There were common dinners too, and lunches at the university restaurant. The city of Leuven in summer was – and is – a very active environment with many thousands of students and researchers taking part in summer schools and conferences. So the evenings were very lively. The first summer school was a great success. At the time there were not a great deal of such offerings around, and it was a new thing for European business schools to cooperate in the area. There were several academic organizations offering annual conferences and some of these also had tutorials and doctoral consortia. The
EIASM was also starting its EDEN program of doctoral courses. But the experience of meeting a broad range of students from the various areas of business and management research was new to the participants. And so was the methodological and philosophical reflection offered. Tom Elfring and I were the two faculty members running the summer school. One of the participants was Professor Arthur Money from the Henley Management School, who had found the idea and the concept of the school challenging and had wanted to take part. As a faculty member was unable to attend, he also volunteered to run discussion sessions with students, when the
participants broke into smaller discussion groups.
 
On the basis of the first summer school Tom Elfring, Arthur Money and I edited a book of the presentations – European Research Paradigms in Business Studies – that was published by the university press at the Copenhagen Business School. Many of the participants of the first summer school continued with academic research careers, and are today professors at universities and business schools.
 
On the basis of the first summer school the concept and format was revised. It was decided that all participants should present their projects and have a chance of getting it discussed by other participants and faculty. The focus of the summer school was kept unchanged, but it was decided to attempt to have a group of faculty participate for the whole duration of the summer school. This would not preclude one or two “visitors” that came in, gave a presentation and left. The mix of faculty lectures and student presentations was kept. The fact that all students should have a chance to present implied that such presentations would be done in parallel. It was also
decided that a summer school should have a general theme that would be giving a sort of topical focus. The second summer school had such a topical focus in strategic management. Other later such foci were theory of the firm, organization theory. Later on it was decided to abolish this idea of a topical focus.
 
In the middle of the 1990’s issues surrounding post-modernism and social constructivism was very much in focus, so such types of issues would also be treated and discussed as would important currents and paradigms in business research and social research in general. From 1992 to 1996 the summer schools were run in Leuven and the basis of the revised concept and format. Among contributors were Tony Berry from Manchester Business School, Bo Sellstedt from the Stockholm School of Economics, Christian Knudsen from the Copenhagen Business School. The organizing was done by Arthur Money and me – with Arthur doing the more practical things. I was securing various sources of funding. There was a report on the summer school at the EDAMBA annual meeting that typically took place in September, and a discussion of the upcoming summer school by the executive committee in its meeting at the beginning of the year. On the basis of this the program was designed and applications for participation invited. Funding was provided by the European program Human Capital and Mobility, and later by the Danish foundation for business education, and also for two years by a grant from the Rector of the Copenhagen Business School Finn Junge-Jensen. During the first years gradually a group of representatives of EDAMBA from various school and universities showed interest in the summer school. Tom Elfring was among these, so was Pierre Batteau
from Aix-en-Provence and Eduard Bonet from ESADE. As mentioned Bo Sellstedt was also highly engaged in the summer school and presented the tradition of critical theory.
 
There was during the first five years of the summer school often voiced a criticism that the location in the sprawling environment in Leuven was distracting and destroying. Students wanted more seclusion and more concentration, and the temptations of the Leuven nightlife were seen by many as destructive. So when conditions for the summer school were changed by the university we looked for another venue. The employee of the university that had helped with the organization actually knew of another place in which NATO had run seminars and summer schools. This was the Chateaux de Bonas around 100 km west of Toulouse in the Gers
part of France. I visited the place in the spring of 1997 and found it sufficiently secluded and still were appropriate for summer schools. It was owned by a professor Simon who in mathematics and artificial intelligence at the university in Paris (Jussieu) and the running was entrusted to his wife, a former actress trained in the classic French theater tradition and thedaughter of the French ambassador to Britain during the Second World War. The chateaux itself was a historic site going back to the Romans, and with meager but adequate provisions for conferences, seminars and summer schools. For the next five years the EDAMBA summer schools – which we started calling summer research academies – took place at this southern French castle. The general formats and concepts did not change much. An important addition
to the program was made by inviting the American theoretician Deirdre McCloskey to be a member of the faculty. She was known for her work on the philosophy and rhetoric of economics and also had a great interest in philosophy of science. She could also provide guidance on academic writing through her interest in rhetoric. She was the first non-european faculty member and has been on the faculty since the first summer school at Bonas in 1997. Others have since joined. Professor Phil Samouel of the Kingston Business School – he would later be Dean of the school - also joined and thus Kingston University became present and active in the summer schools.
 
In 2001 the Chateaux de Bonas was bought by a Norwegian billionaire and it became impossible to run the summer school there. Through internet searches by Jens Joergensen of the Copenhagen Business School who had for many years been the administrative support of the summer school, a possible new venue was found in the Ecole-Abbay at Soreze around 80 kilometers east of Toulouse. It was actually a former French-american executive of Alcoa, who had started running a vineyard in Gaillac, that pointed to the place. It was possible to get reasonable terms for the summer school, which was now run solely with a smaller subsidy from EDAMBA as such. Several applications were during the years made to the European Union for support, but they faltered due to the fact that the summer school was well-established and thus not a new venture deserving support.
 
In 2002 the first summer school – research academy – was held in Soreze. The well tried concept and format was kept, but there gradually developed more emphasis on research methodology and its foundations. The use and justification of statistics became a topic. The US textbook writer Joe Hair joined the faculty and presented various aspects of multivariate analysis. Thus discussion of various approaches to research became a focus. New methodologies centered on narratives and rhetoric were presented and discussion of both quantitative and qualitative research methods were refined. In the middle of the decennium Arthur Money retired and Therese Woodward from Kingston Business School took his place. She introduced a division between two strands of the program. The beginning doctoral students were given topics on how to start a research project and on various research methods open to them. For advanced students there were opportunites to learn about how to get published, how to write a dissertation etc.. Also the presentations by students were divided in these two strands. Therese also strengthened the focus on the needs of the students in each strand, and on the student presentations as essential feed-back to the individual participant. I could say that the summer school became more student-focused. For a couple of years the Danish researcher from Aarhus School of Business Erik Maløe took part as a presenter and expert on case studies. This topic has now been taken over by Gill Wright from the business school at Manchester Metropolitan University.
 
In 2008 Therese Woodward wanted to retire and her function was taken over by Stephen Gourlay also of the Kingston Business School. Trained as an archeologist he has moved into business studies and has made significant contributions to the discussion on tacit knowledge and knowledge management. The focus of the summer research academy has been kept but with strengthened emphasis on methodology. It is still a great experience for participants to meet fellow researchers in the business area that work with completely different methods and in different sub-areas. The faculty presentations have become presentations of current trends in research, the research system and in business research. Discussions on mode 1 and mode 2, on statistics and its use – statistical significance – on new approaches to qualitative research, and the moral and political responsibility of business researchers in the wake of the financial crisis have been topics of debate and discussion. Students have responded with enthusiasm and critique, and have themselves often presented research projects taking up important challenges in business and society.
 
Over the years more than 700 hundred doctoral students have participated in the EDAMBA summer research academies. Many of these have now important careers in academia and some also in business. Participants have again and again expressed their positive evaluation of the experience of meeting other doctoral students NOT in their own particular area of business studies. Over the years the summer academy has become more and more international. It started with European doctoral students. Often then European students coming from European universities and business school but with home base in countries outside Europe – typically countries like India and China but also African and South American countries – have participated. In later yeats doctoral students from the USA and also students form EDAMBA
member schools outside Europe have participated. An example is the Stellenbosch University business school in South Africa. 
 
Becoming a researcher through a doctoral education always involves some reflection of what it is to do research and what the responsibilities of being a researcher involves. Being a researcher in the area of management and business also involves reflecting on the particular challenges of this area. Business is a huge part of modern societies and understanding the processes and phenomena involved and the relations between business as a social activity and the rest of society is extremely important both for those working inside business and those working outside – for instance in business education. Helping to educate responsible business researchers is both
important and challenging. The EDAMBA summer research academies have over the last 20 years tried to help meet this challenge.
 
1.2 The EDAMBA Exchange Programs
 
Very early in the existence of EDAMBA it was decided to try to further exchange of doctoral students. The European research programs – the so-called Framework programs – supported this in general as a way of creating more cooperation between European research institutions. I applied for support for this under the Human Capital and Mobility program and we got a number of exchange fellowship months. These were offered to doctoral students for stay at a possible a number of exchanges of doctoral students. This initiated a mode of functioning where openness and staying at other institutions became a natural thing. Students started to think
internationally, and to find it natural and a good contribution to their education to experience other research environments. In some countries staying at other research institutions in other countries even became a requirement. Research is by nature international and so should research education be.
 
1.3 The EUDOKMA – European Doctoral School on Knowledge and Management
 
In 1999 the European research funding programs made it possible to create and seek funding for European doctoral programs. Creating such programs had been begun in the engineering field and under support from the European organization of universities – actually the organization of their rectors. The European Union as it had then become of course would like to support such a development totally in line with their intentions in their research and cooperation support programs in other areas. EDAMBA had already profited from support from these for running summer schools and exchanges. The requirements for support were fairly extensive and involved a setup with formal cooperation agreements between the institutions involved. It was decided at an executive committee meeting in 1999 to try to create a European
doctoral school in one of the areas in which EDAMBA member schools were working. It could have been finance or marketing but the new focus on the role of knowledge in the economy was chosen. In the middle of the 1990’s the concept of the knowledge economy had come forward – the OECD played a large role here – and the thinking around knowledge and the learning society/organization was seen as “cutting edge”. The ideas for a doctoral program were also influenced by the emerging concept of doctoral schools. A doctoral school was conceived as a organized program with a set of courses in the area of research giving and defining the stateof-
art in the area, a set of courses on the research methods being pursued in the actual research projects and a number of research students and supervisors connected to active research environments with a number of ongoing research projects to which students could be attached. The European programs could support the organization of common doctoral courses and the exchange of doctoral students. A network was created and in several meetings an agreement for cooperation was made. Among the members of the network were Copenhagen Business School, ESADE, Henley Management College, Uppsala University, Rotterdam School of Management, and the research institute ISTUD in Italy. Rules defining a doctoral program were set up and what amounted to a consortium agreement was entered into. The basic underlying conception of a European doctoral degree, were inspired from the CEMS program – Community of European Management Schools. This program issued a certificate
supplementing the degree certificate from the individual school where the student was enrolled. The certificate was certifying that the student had followed courses under the program and these courses were designed by groups under the program with representatives of the member schools. The EUDOKMA certificate would in the same way certify that a doctoral student had taken common courses in a certain amount, had spent time in another European doctoral program that was a member of EUDOKMA and that the assessment of the dissertation had been made with a committee with European members. So the ideal was a doctoral program which respected the conference of degrees by national institutions and programs in which students enrolled, but also programs that cooperated in ways that were decided at the European level and to which the members of the doctoral school conformed. The European Union had at the time started to use the name Marie Curie for the various programs under the Framework Program for cooperation and exchange and the doctoral schools were called Marie Curie training sites. I made the application in the fall of 1999 and it was successful. Thus in the following years a number of courses were organized and several exchange students got funding for staying at another institution in the network. The grant provided for support for doctoral students to take part in doctoral courses and for longer stays at the schools that formed the doctoral school. The
course program consisted of courses in research methodology – these were offered by Henley and Kingston in cooperation – typically run by Arthur Money and Phil Samouel – and by ESADE – typically run by Eduard Bonet and myself. Then there were courses in key research areas. Examples of these were organizational learning – typically offered by ESADE – knowledge management, which was offered by Copenhagen Business School and run by Mette Moensted and me, Knowledge, strategy and the firm, offered by Rotterdam School of Management. Each year a course program was published and students could apply and get support for travel and staying expenses. After the first couple of years other institutions joined the network and offered courses. This showed that it was both possible to create a systematic set of courses in a given area of business research and to do it at the European level. The idea of doctoral schools took hold, and now there are many and they offer an organized set of courses, courses for supervisors and seminars and symposia for their doctoral students. The idea of international cooperation in organizing and running such schools has also taken hold although there is still a very “national” flavor to academic degrees. The EUDOKMA idea of “international” certification of national degrees has shown a way forward. Under the Erasmus program the idea of European doctoral schools and of cooperation between doctoral programs has been taken a step further. The EUDOKMA program was part of the development of doctoral education. It preserved the ideal of the apprenticeship form of doctoral training and the ideal of research education through doing research. You learn to be a researcher by being it. It preserved the ideal – a challenging one – of the supervisor as initiator, coach and mentor, not to say teacher in one and the same person. But it added the ideal of a running set of specialized courses offering introduction to the research frontier and current research issues and discussions and more instrumental courses in relevant research methodologies. Also included in the idea of a doctoral
school was that it should include reflection and awareness of the methods and philosophical assumptions underlying a particular piece or tradition of research. Thus EUDOKMA helped show the way forward for doctoral programs.
 
In 1991 when EDAMBA was founded I was chairman of the Doctoral Program at the Copenhagen Business School in the Faculty of Business Economics (there was also a smaller Faculty of Modern Languages). At the time the doctoral program was small and only aimed at training researchers for future employment at the school. In 1993 a new structure was adopted creating a program rather than just an assembly of individual research projects under supervision. The further development of the program followed that of EDAMBA closely as did most of doctoral education in Denmark. With the development of a more knowledge and innovation intensive economy the need for research training also changed. This was reflected in both the enormous growth in the number of doctoral students and the change of the nature of
doctoral programs. Many countries developed forms of doctoral schools and international cooperation intensified. In 2000 I was made chairman of the Danish Council for Doctoral Education which had the task of developing Danish doctoral education among other things through the implementation of doctoral schools and larger doctoral programs at the national level. In 2001 I was called on to build a new research institution attached to the newly founded Danish University of Education – The Learning Lab Denmark. There I also worked with doctoral education and part of the Learning Lab Denmark was a doctoral school in organizational learning with Professor Bente Elkjær as chair – DOCSOL. Doctoral education was in this context understood not only in the traditional Humboldtian way as apprenticeship
learning but also as a form of social or organizational learning. During the years many people have assisted in running the various activities of EDAMBA in the sphere of academic programs. The summer schools where administered by Jens Joergensen who was working in various capacities during the years in the administration at CBS, and later took hold of finances at Learning Lab Denmark. He also assisted in the making and administration of the many EU grants and contracts we obtained. These were instrumental in making summer schools, exchanges and course programs possible.
 
1.4 From EDAMBA Winter Academies to EDAMBA-EIASM Consortium on Doctoral
Supervision and the New Global Research Landscape
 
Building on the success of the three EDAMBA winter academies that took place at Grenoble Ecole de Management from 2008 to 2010, EDAMBA joined forces with its parent institution, the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) and launched the EDAMBA-EIASM Consortium on Doctoral Supervision and the New Global Research Landscape. The Consortium was held at Grenoble Ecole de Management in 2012 and 2013, then it has been settled to ESADE, Barcelona since 2014.
 
Developing capable doctoral supervisors has become a major concern around the world as we’re facing an increasing shortage of doctorally qualified faculty in Management and Business Studies. The fourth cycle in the ‘Bologna process’ aimed at newly appointed or/and junior faculty interested in doctoral supervision. For EIASM and EDAMBA this created a unique opportunity to collaborate on the issue of doctoral supervision as the development of capable doctoral supervisors begs for the creation of an exchange forum, where both junior and senior supervisors could reflect, discuss, and share best practices. The ultimate aim, is the development
of capable doctoral supervisors for fostering research active academic communities across Europe and beyond, producing relevant and rigorous knowledge, and able to fight their way in the new, highly competitive global research landscape.
The EDAMBA – EIASM Consortium targets, on the one hand, newly appointed doctoral supervisors and/or potential supervisors who have recently obtained their doctoral degree and work in European Universities or Business Schools, but have yet to supervise a doctoral student to successful completion towards his or her thesis (e.g., PhD, DBA). On the other hand, our Consortium targets senior academics interested in the issue of doctoral supervision, who wish to reflect on their valuable experiences and to profit from exchanges with others.
 
Both senior and junior colleagues will benefit in multiple fronts from:
 
•  sharing concerns and/or questions relative to doctoral supervision across institutional,
   disciplinary and geographical boundaries;
•  engaging in a dialogue in an intellectually stimulating and still intimate environment ;
•  learning from best research practices throughout Europe and beyond.
 
The size of the group is limited to about 30 doctoral supervisors both junior and senior faculty from an array of Business and Management disciplines and institutions. They will be mainly selected from the respective networks of the EIASM academic council members and EDAMBA doctoral programmes throughout Europe and beyond. In addition a few places will be reserved for interested applicants from outside both the EIASM and EDAMBA communities. We have invited about a dozen Faculty from the EU and USA who have agreed to give their time free of charge. The majority of them have already contributed lectures, shared research results and taught in small groups all three previous EDAMBA winter academies.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

EDAMBA aims to achieve its mission through three pillars of activity:
1. The Annual Meeting
2. The Summer Research Academy
3. The EDAMBA-EIASM Consortium of Doctoral Supervision

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EDAMBA engages in global collaboration across networks
1. European Code of Practice
2. EQUAL
3. AACSB

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