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PhD Studentships

For the academic year 2013-14 (start date 1st October 2013) the deadline for applications has now passed.  Funded studentships for the academic year 2014-15 are likely to be advertised in approximately January 2014.   In order to be considered for a full-time funded studentship your application must be based on one of the advertised projects and you should apply through our online Research Degrees Prospectus. Examples of projects recently advertised are listed further down.

We also welcome full-time and part-time self-funded applications in any of the business and management research topics, although topics would be dependent on the availability of appropriate supervisors.

Applicants who speak  English as a foreign language and are applying for a Tier 4 visa must have achieved SELTS (Secure English Language Test) from a UK Border Agency-approved provider at level B2 or above in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), in all four elements (reading, writing, listening, speaking).

Examples of recently advertised studentship topics:

Accounting and Finance

  • Corporate governance in Africa
  • Portfolio diversification in practice
  • Digital reporting and the constitutive entanglement of material technology, business, regulators and society
  • Reconceptualising value: defining, measuring and managing social value creation by business enterprises

People and Organisations

  • Financing social entrepreneurship and information asymmetry: a study exploring the experiences of social venture capitalist firms and their investee social entrepreneurs
  • Working lives
  • A discursive investigation of leading in organisational conversations
  • The internationalisation of higher education

Public Leadership and Social Enterprise

  • The role of enterprise policies in promoting environmental sustainability: a comparative study
  • Choosing and working with partners in international collaborations

Strategy and Marketing

  • How ethnic minority culturally derived identities and related consumer behaviours change on becoming a parent
  • Business model innovation in social enterprises
  • Ethnic minorities and alcohol consumption
  • Strategy processes, practices and learning in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) or small island economies
  • The impact of non-market strategy on corporate competitive advantage
  • How Digital is Impacting Marketing Strategy

Further information

For enquries about Open University research degrees in general and the OU experience, please contact our Research Degrees team (phone +44 (0)1908 654882).

For enquiries specifically about studying for a research degree with the Open University Business School, please contact Debby Hing (phone: +44 (0)1908 655272).