Our Integrated PhD Management Studies (at our Southend Campus) provides a route to doctoral study if you do not have a master’s degree, or have little to no research training. It enables you to spend your first year completing a full-time Masters-level qualification, which will equip you with the business knowledge and research skills needed to begin PhD study the following year. Your PhD will then be studied full time, over the next three years.
You can choose to follow a traditional thesis approach, where you write a dissertation, or follow a 'three paper' thesis, where you produce three research articles, framed by an introduction and conclusion. Your supervisors support you to submit these papers to conferences and for publication in international journals, so you can begin to build you research portfolio well before graduation.
This PhD gives you the opportunity to interrogate issues surrounding the contemporary workplace and how these relate to wider society on a local and global level. This programme attracts students from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities, with wide ranging social science research interests. You can tailor your studies to a profession or sector of your choice and may choose to explore issues such as:

marketing and brand management
strategic management, including mergers and acquisitions
the role of networks in the modern economy
organisational power relations and leadership
logistics and supply chains

You study at Essex Business School, the largest department at the University of Essex, at our Southend Campus. We are a business school with an international outlook. Our doctoral students join us from all over the world and we are committed to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). With us, you join the next generation of social scientists influencing business theory, policy, and practice. You become part of a lively, international research community, challenging conventional wisdom to make organisations better places to do business.
Your future
Our PhD programmes are designed to foster the business leaders and researchers of the future. Our graduates use creativity, innovation, and ethical awareness to meet the many challenges facing the international business world.
Our doctoral graduates have secured roles in academia at some of the best international universities, as well as organisations in the public and private sectors. Recent examples include careers with Leeds University Business School, Cambridge Education, EY (Ernst and Young) and public sector roles around the world.