Program Overview
The Ph.D. in Business Administration – Management is a full-time, in-residence program with two tracks: micro (Organizational Behavior) and macro (Strategic Management). Students in the micro track do most of their research with Joyce Bono, Amir Erez, Mo Wang, Klodiana Lanaj, and Brian Swider. Students in the macro track do most of their research with Gwendolyn Lee, Yixuan Li, David Ross, and Aaron Hill. The mission of the program is to train students to be academic scholars and to place them at top research universities.
Why Choose Florida?
What makes the University of Florida a great place to earn your Ph.D. in Management? Three factors are particularly important: the productivity of our faculty, our student-focused climate, and the cutting edge training that students receive.
Faculty Productivity
When it comes to gaining research skills, Ph.D. students learn by doing. Having a productive faculty gives students more opportunities to get involved in projects and more opportunities to build their research portfolio. A joint study by Texas A&M University and the University of Georgia shows that the University of Florida management faculty are in the top 3 nationally for number of publications per faculty (2020 #1, 2021 #1, five year average #2). Given the size of our faculty, those numbers rank Florida as one of the most productive departments in the country.
Student Focus
Having a productive faculty only benefits Ph.D. students when faculty work with Ph.D. students. At Florida, students join faculty research projects from day one, completing a required first and second year paper under faculty supervision. We use an apprenticeship model, wherein students’ first work on faculty projects and then begin to develop their own program of research. Our current students work on many projects with our faculty, all geared towards publication in top tier journals.
Cutting-Edge Training
Of course, the education itself is also a core component of any Ph.D. program. At Florida, much of the core Ph.D. coursework occurs during the first two years of the program, though students often take advanced methods courses, or special topics of interest outside the department, over the course of their program.
Placements
Florida’s Ph.D. placements over the past several years have been among the best in the country. Our recent graduates have joined the faculties at Cornell, Maryland, Michigan State, Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Purdue, Iowa, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Arizona, Louisiana State, Rutgers, Penn State, The University of Virginia, and the University of Minnesota’, among others. Those students have gone on to post productive records at their universities, well on their way to earning promotion and tenure (and, in multiple cases, earning awards for early career achievement). Our former students also serve on multiple editorial boards and are associate editors in major management journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, and Personnel Psychology.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How long is the program?
Most students complete the program in five years. Students typically interview for jobs during the fall of their fifth year and complete their final dissertation defense in the spring of their fifth year.
- Is there a part-time, weekend, or distance version of the program?
No. Getting a Ph.D. is not just about coursework—it includes an apprenticeship component where students learn to conduct research side-by-side with faculty. That experience requires a full-time, in-residence commitment.
- How much teaching do students do?
Ph.D. students generally teach two or three sections (total) across the last three years of their program. Students teach undergraduate courses in Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, and Strategic Management.