Contesting Institutional Hegemony in Today’s Business Schools

"Studying towards a doctoral qualification, at least in my experience and those of the students I have supervised and taught over the years, is a unique experience, and one that more often than not is profoundly stressful, seemingly endless and beset by numerous competing, even incompatible demands. The twelve contributors to this book offer rich, scholarly and carefully crafted accounts of the process from different parts of the world. As importantly, though, the book provides a much needed first person testament to the fact that the life of a doctoral student is intellectually, emotionally, politically and economically precarious. An exceptionally important collection which deserves to be read by academics at all career stages.”

To address the 50% attrition rate of business PhD students in the US, Prasad offers the academic community some direct representation of the diverse voices of students navigating through the complexity of the doctoral programs. Students and recent graduates of doctoral programs express what holds meaning for them. He coordinated to avoid potential redundancies across the accounts. Within the overall themes of negotiating professional and personal lives, institutional pressure and its implications, and managing the day-to-day, they present such perspectives as triple role conflict: the teacher, the student, the parent; early career reflections on discursive pressures in business schools, playing the game and trying not to lose myself: a doctoral student's perspective on the institutional pressures for research output, the language of an impostor, and stuck in an in-between state: exploring the PhD student experience through ambivalence.