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Karimli Tural Doctoral student Karimli Tural Doctoral student
Degree
Dr. rer. pol.

Language
EN

Scholarship
Stipend & Tuition Waiver

Granted to all successful candidates

Programme Start
September

Duration
5 Years

Application Deadline
15 January

Management Concentration

This concentration is one of the three concentrations offered in Frankfurt School's Doctoral Programme.

We are among the very few European business schools conducting top-level scientific research and training doctorates in English. Joining the Management track enables you to study cognitive and behavioural processes shaping the decisions of managers, entrepreneurs, employees and customers as well as the external and internal drivers of organisational design, strategy and performance in fast-changing, globalised markets.

Choosing life as a management scholar is an ambitious but rewarding career choice. If you join our five-year doctoral programme, you will be expected to get your bearings through a number of theory and method courses before moving on to produce research of international scientific standard.

Programme Structure

A prototypical path through our programme would have you brush up on statistical inference, qualitative induction, or machine learning, immerse yourself in the theory of the firm or decision making, beef up your knowledge of your chosen specialist area with internal and external courses, learn-by-doing on research projects with faculty members, craft and execute an original thesis, present and publish ongoing work at conferences and journals, go on an overseas visit to engage with leaders in your field, hone your teaching skills and prepare for the institutional demands of entering the professorial job market.

Each field of research specialisation deserves a slightly modified version of the above. To get you started, you will have approximately two years’ worth of courses, beginning with the standard courses required for all Frankfurt School doctoral students. These will be complemented with the specific management courses. During the course period, you can start exploring research projects with Frankfurt School faculty. The idea is to thus identify an advisory team for the later, research stage of the programme.

Management Curriculum

Management research at Frankfurt School is to move the research frontier, be it through theoretical or empirical contributions. We pride ourselves on making meaningful additions to knowledge by tackling hard problems with novel approaches. To equip students with the foundation needed to join us in this scientific endeavour, we deliver the in-house courses listed below and additionally ask students to partake in specialised courses outside Frankfurt School. This is to ensure that students get exactly the content needed for their individual research foci:

1

Mathematics & Statistics

Mathematics & Statistics

Calculus of Several Variables
Functions of Several Variables
Implicit Functions and Their Derivatives
Quadratic Forms and Definite Matrices
Unconstrained Optimization
Constrained Optimization
Concave and Quasiconcave Functions
Economic Applications
Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors
Advanced Linear Algebra
Advanced Analysis
Basic Probability and Statistics

Econometrics I

Econometrics I

The class provides key knowledge on how different econometric models work and most importantly sheds light on their limitations. The course also provides step by step application of new tools to different data sets in the computer lab. You will be asked to replicate and in some cases improve, prior empirical studies.

Microeconomics

Microeconomics

1. Demand Theory
2. Expected Utility Theory
3. General Equilibrium Theory
4. Non-Cooperative Game Theory
a) Dominant strategies and applications
b) Nash Equilibrium and applications
c) Subgame Perfect Equilibrium and applications
5. Principal-Agent Theory
6. The Theory of Incomplete Contracts

Field Experiments

Field Experiments

Coming soon

Elective

Elective

Students can choose up to three elective courses suitable for their chosen area of specialisation. These can be offered by Frankfurt School but often are found at other research universities. The faculty and the programme office help the student identify appropriate courses.

2

Econometrics II

Econometrics II

The class provides key knowledge on how different econometric models work and most importantly sheds light on their limitations. The course also provides step by step application of new tools to different data sets in the computer lab. You will be asked to replicate and in some cases improve, prior empirical studies.

Game Theory

Game Theory

The course aims to familiarise students with the basic concepts of game theory. Students learn different classes of games and a variety of solution concepts to predict strategic behaviour in these games. They will learn how to capture practically relevant situations in a game and the necessary tools to solve these games.

Causal Inference

Casual Inference

Coming soon

Computational Statistics

Computational Statistics

Coming soon

Elective

Elective

Students can choose up to three elective courses suitable for their chosen area of specialisation. These can be offered by Frankfurt School but often are found at other research universities. The faculty and the programme office help the student identify appropriate courses.

3

Industrial Organization

Industrial Organization

Coming soon

Advanced Topics in Management

Advanced Topics in Management

The course covers a variety of methodological concerns, topic include:
Philosophy of science, experimental design, case study methodologies,
problems with and alternatives to traditional model fitting approaches,
replication and prediction, data management.

Multivariate Statistics

Multivariate Statistics

Coming soon

Elective

Elective

Students can choose up to three elective courses suitable for their chosen area of specialisation. These can be offered by Frankfurt School but often are found at other research universities. The faculty and the programme office help you to identify appropriate courses.

PhD Brownbag

PhD Brownbag

Coming soon

4

Master's Thesis / 2nd year paper

Master Thesis / 2nd year paper

The second year paper is the first piece of the student’s very own presentable research work. It can also be used to obtain a Master’s degree in Business Research and Analytics.

5-10

Research (Dissertation and Defence)

Research (Dissertation and Defence)

Upon passing the Qualifying Exam at the end of the 2nd year, students enter the research phase of the programme. Students dedicate themselves to their research projects, produce scholarly papers and present their research at international academic conferences. They also have the opportunity to interact with international scholars visiting Frankfurt School to present research in the seminar series.

Seminars & Conferences

Research is a social process. Your Frankfurt School experience includes opportunities to both solicit feedback on your own research as well as learn from others’ ongoing research. The former you can do by presenting early drafts of your ideas and papers at the department’s brownbag seminar series, where colleagues provide a friendly environment for improvement. Besides informal chats with the faculty and your peers, the department’s annual summer school provides an additional intensive event for discussing research. To learn about and discuss current research conducted at other universities, a regular seminar series and occasional conferences with outside speakers provides ample possibilities for interaction with the field. You can find the upcoming management seminars in the below table.

Recent management conferences at FS include:

FS Marketing Research Camp

PROGIC: Workshop on Combining Probability and Logic

SMS: Strategic Management Society Frankfurt Special Conference

Research projects at FS

We are currently looking for highly motivated researchers interested in our research projects in marketing, strategy and organizational behaviour.

Strategic Decision Making of CEOs, TMTs, and BRDs

The goal of our research is to gain a greater understanding of how social and behavioural forces affect human actors at the top of the organisation. We do that by studying the contexts of strategic decision making by CEOs, top management teams, and boards of directors. Our research has an impact through the development and testing of new theoretical insights in top journals, and also by disseminating those insights through articles geared towards a lay audience.

Prof. Dr. Markus Fitza

Prof. Dr. Stevo Pavicevic

Microfoundations of Scaling: Implications for Strategy and Organization Design

The goal of this project is to develop a novel research agenda that investigates the microfoundations of scaling in firms, including the properties of organizations that give rise to scaling laws, as well as the implications of scaling laws for strategy and organization design.
Today, the most valuable companies in the world employ a significant share of digital resources, such as software, algorithms, and data.  The greater scalability of firms’ digital resources is fundamentally changing the nature of competition and the basis of competitive advantage.  Yet, we are only beginning to understand the underlying forces that determine scaling and its implications for strategy and organization design.  What organizational challenges must be met to achieve success in the age of scaling?  What strategies are (not) effective in the age of scaling?  Are you excited about the opportunity to contribute research that addresses these questions?

Prof. Dr. Thorbjørn Knudsen

Prof. Dr. Lucas Böttcher

Consumer Information Processing

From the perspective of marketers it is very important to be able to predict and influence consumer choice. We study the relationship between cognitive and motor processes in consumer decision making/choice using eye and mouse tracking technologies. Our goal is to predict and influence choice. For example, we ask in the context of asking consumers to donate to a cause, in an online environment, would the design of the webpage and the physical location of the cursor (mouse) impact willingness to donate?

Prof. Dr. Selin Atalay

Prof. Dr. Florian Ellsäßer

Customer Reviews in the Context of Products with Short Life Cycles

Reviews are important for consumers, manufacturers, brands, and retailers for various reasons. The review history of a product has a strong effect on the success of the product on the market. It reduces uncertainty about product quality and fit and can therefore stimulate a purchase or help to avoid costly product returns. A rich product review history has proven to be very powerful, especially in market places with large product assortments. In the context of products with short life cycles, such as products in the fashion industry, accumulation of product reviews pose a substantial challenge as products’ life span is very limited. We are interested in how the fashion industry (and other industries with products with short life cycles) can address this problem. The topic is crucially important from the perspective of brand reputation building.

Prof. Dr. Selin Atalay

Prof. Dr. Alexander Bleier

Prof. Dr. Siham El Kihal

Prof. Dr. Tetyana Kosyakova

Experimental Organization Science

The goal of this project is to examine behavioural patterns of judgement and decision making at the group level, including dynamics arising from temporal or hierarchical structures. An example topic is the aggregation of individual decisions under uncertainty into organisational resource allocation and outcomes. Few lab studies examine behaviour at the organisational level, and organisation science comprises few experimental studies. Yet, properly understanding firms requires research on the level above the individual, and below that of markets. To isolate mechanisms operating at that level, experimental methodologies have few rivals. In theory. In practice, organisation-level lab work requires special care. If you want to contribute to a fledgling movement on experimental organisation science, we would love to hear from you.

Prof. Dr. Ronald Klingebiel

Prof. Dr. Thorbjørn Knudsen

Prof. Dr. Mirko Kremer

Constructing and Evaluating R&D Portfolios

The goal of this project is to understand the theoretical and behavioral issues when building R&D portfolios, and to develop  novel methods and tools to evaluate the quality of an R&D portfolio

For R&D- and innovation-driven organizations, long-term success critically hinges on those firms’ ability to build impactful R&D portfolios. However, constructing an R&D portfolio—that is, selecting which innovation projects (not) to pursue—is a daunting challenge: In the early stages of such innovation projects, uncertainty dominates, and it is hence hard to predict, ex ante, which projects will be the best choice ex post. In addition, firms can rarely predict, with sufficient precision, the interaction effects between the different projects in their R&D portfolio. So, what is the best way to build an R&D portfolio? Which biases do managers introduce to that decision process? And how can we evaluate, ex post, how well an R&D portfolio was constructed? Are you excited about the opportunity to contribute research that addresses these questions? Join us!

Prof. Dr. Mirko Kremer

Prof. Dr. Jochen Schlapp

Sample Publications

Frankfurt School publishes in the top outlets for management research. To get a sense for the kind of research we conduct, please click on the following sample publications:

Publication

Title

Professor

Academy of Management Journal

Pseudo-Precision? Precise Forecasts and Impression Management in Managerial Earnings Forecasts

Markus Fitza

Administrative Science Quarterly

Colleagues and Competitors: How Internal Social Comparisons Shape Organizational Search and Adaptation

Nils Stieglitz

Management Science

Inferring Quality from Wait Time

Mirko Kremer

Organization Science

Noise as Signal in Learning from Rare Events

Claus Rerup

Strategic Management Journal

Entry Timing and Innovation Strategy in Feature Phones

Ronald Klingebiel

Management Faculty

Strategy & Organisation Area
Strategy & Organisation Area
Data & Decision Analysis Area
Technology & Operations Area
Marketing Area

Student funding and scholarships

Frankfurt School offers fully-funded study places for the doctoral programme in order to attract and support the brightest minds in academia.

Students are expected to devote 100% of their working time to their doctoral studies at Frankfurt School for up to five years.

Funding includes a tuition fee waiver and a cost-of-living stipend. The monthly stipend comprises of EUR 1,820.

The stipend will be granted for five years conditional on the continued satisfaction of all academic programme requirements.

From the first year onwards doctoral students will receive EUR 1,820 for the period of 5 years.

Furthermore Frankfurt School covers costs related to research, including conferences and overseas visits.

Application process

1. Target Group

Outstanding graduates of a Bachelor‘s or Master’s programme in business administration, finance, management, accounting or related fields who aspire to launch an academic career.

Candidates in the final year of a Master’s or Bachelor’s programme are welcome to apply with their most recent academic transcript. Please note that the degree has to be completed by the time of the beginning of the programme.

2. Online Application

The first step of our application process is to complete the online application form. You will need to upload the following required documents. Please note that you need a certified English or German translation for all documents, that are not originally in German or English. The application platform will be open between 15th September and 15th January.

Required Documents

  • CV and list of publications (if existent)
  • Certified copy of your University Entrance Qualification (Abitur, A-levels or equivalent)
  • Certified copy of your University Degree Certificate or equivalent and academic transcript of records
  • Official GMAT or GRE results
  • Proof of English Language Proficiency Test (TOEFL IBT min. score of 100/IELTS min. score of 7.0)
  • Statement of Purpose (up to 2 pages): Why are you interested in your chosen field of study? What are the potential areas of research you might pursue? Have you completed any research projects with faculty members? Is the research of any member of the FS faculty of interest to you?
  • Optional Statement: If you would like the committee to consider any of the following factors, you can describe their relevance in a separate statement within the application. This can contribute to the diversity of the entering class: background, extracurricular activities, work experience.
  • Two letters of recommendation: To request the letters from your recommenders, you have to register on a separate platform and send your request from there.

    Please click on this link to access the platform: http://apply.interfolio.com/79802

    Create a profile by clicking on the button “Apply now”.

    If you require assistance, go to the “Home” tab and click the “Dossier Quick Start Guide”.

    Once you send your request to your potential recommender, they will receive an e-mail together with a link where they can upload their recommendation letter confidentially. Please provide a deadline for your recommendation letter to ensure we receive it on time. Once the recommender has uploaded the letter, we will be notified and will be able to access it.

3. Interview

Successful applicants will be invited to a online interview with faculty members of the chosen concentration.

4. Results

The final decision regarding admission to our doctoral programme will be made by the Committee for Doctoral Proceedings. It is based on the applicants overall portfolio and the interview.