Doctoral Research Opportunities
 

Possible Topics for Doctoral Research

Accounting

• An exploration of self-efficacy among accounting and business students
• An examination of the factors influencing retention and drop out in accounting and business programmes
• Measuring burnout among accounting and finance staff in higher education
• An exploration of teachers’ approaches to teaching Leaving Certificate accounting
• Conflicts of interest within the regulation of the accounting profession
• The accounting profession in a changing regulatory space
• Performance measurement and management in tourism enterprises – hotels, restaurants, activity centres
• Financial management skills in owner managed businesses
• Risk management and decision-making in tourism enterprises
• An investigation into the efficacy of CRM in banking and hotels

Economics, Finance and Entrepreneurship

• The origins and evolution of new firms
• New venture creation processes
• Computational issues in statistical inference of economic and financial data
• Evaluation business incubation effectiveness
• Policies and strategies for supporting SME start-ups
• Entrepreneurship education in a campus context
• Venture capital
• Models of financing in high-tech companies
• Asset pricing (e.g., implications of stock pricing anomalies and return excess-predictability for market efficiency, pricing in incomplete markets, 'no good-deal' pricing, etc.)
• Econometric modelling and forecasting of asset returns 
• Behavioural finance and experimental financial economics
• Mutual and hedge funds performance attribution
• Risk modelling and management in financial institutions

Human Resource Management

• The diffusion of innovations in healthcare
• HRM and performance
• HRM in smaller firms
• Women and leadership
• Women in science - Research productivity of academics and social networks
• Psychological contracts for academics and the employment relationship

Management & Information Systems

• Crisis/Emergency Management
• Business Continuity Management
• Leading Information & Communication Technologies (ICT)-enabled change within the Irish health services
• Exploring strategic leadership in the public sector
• Strategic innovation for Irish agriculture-The case of ICT
• Competition and game theory
• Strategic decision making
• Business process improvement
• Public procurement and innovation in the procurement process - in particular the role of SMEs, innovation and the interaction with the public procurement processes
• Environmental sustainability and its relationship with modern supply chain operations
• Supply chain performance measurement and management
• Trust and privacy management in a digital environment
• Electronic government & service quality
• Social impacts of technology adoption and consumption
• Ethics and IT
• The role of media on corporate governance

 Marketing 

• The development of marketing functions in sport
• Professional management and marketing in voluntary sports organizations
• Spectators and the consumption of sport
• Marketing metrics, marketing performance assessment
• Market orientation and new product development
• The critical role of leaders' personal values in marketing strategy and Firm performance
• Quantitative market research methods

Guidelines on how to prepare a proposal (pdf)

The doctoral programme at DCU Business School now includes a number of taught components, so although we welcome proposals throughout the year, we encourage students to commence their registration at the beginning of the academic year.  However, commencement of studies in certain circumstances is also possible at other times.