Doing a Doctorate in BISE in Germany, Austria and Switzerland? A Debate on the Why, What and How

Excerpt

In recent years, the doctorate degree has been subject to a seeming loss of value (e.g., Cyranoski et al. 2011; Economist 2010; Guldner 2019). One striking indicator is the decline in number of top executives with doctorates: while 58% of board members of German companies held a doctorate in 2007, this number has shrunk to 44% in 2017 (Guldner 2019). Other indicators of labor market success have also deteriorated for doctorate holders over the last 20 years: incomes have fallen and fewer doctorate holders than before are working full-time – at a time when the labor market has otherwise developed well (e.g., Economist 2010). Yet, the need for highly qualified employees for example with respect to digitization has been growing. Just recently, for example, companies’ demand for experts on Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen a stark increase (Fasse and Kerkmann 2018). This makes it all the more surprising that the growing number of doctoral students (an average growth of 44% over the last 20 years) has not been enthusiastically received by the labor market and may imply that the doctorate has degenerated into a meritorious commodity. This development may also increasingly affect the Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) community and, therefore, requires a discourse on the role of the doctorate in our field, including companies (demand-side) and universities (supply-side). How can we make sense of these trends? Traditionally, receiving a doctorate has been commonplace in German-speaking areas (as well as in Scandinavia), and more so than in other areas. The reason for this is that it has been regarded as an instrument for educating and forming social, economic and political elites. These countries have a free university system, but no elite institutions as for example France, the United Kingdom or the United States of America (Preston 2014). Hence, the doctorate also adopts the role of signaling excellence, which in other cultural areas happens on an institutional level. Despite the negative trends mentioned above, this “signifier effect” has been preserved in some areas: in natural sciences such as biology or chemistry, but also within business administration especially with respect to professional service firms (Guldner 2019). However, obtaining a doctorate no longer represents the only viable option for young people to stand out from the crowd, since many alternatives are now available to them, be it a stay abroad, an MBA degree, or a visit to the start-up scene. …