Here you can find information about the PhD programme at the Department of Management:
Here you can download an overview of useful information for MGMT PhD students:
The MGMT procedure for appointment of PhD assessment committees adheres to the BSS Graduate School’s Rules and regulations for the PhD programme, section 12: “Assessment and defence of PhD dissertation”.
Please specifically pay attention to the “Conflict of interest” section 12.1:
“There must be no conflict of interest between the members of the assessment and the PhD student and PhD dissertation, cf. the Rules on conflict of interest in Danish Public Administration Act. Thus, the members are not allowed to have:
• a personal or financial interest in the outcome of the defence
• prepared, submitted or published articles with the PhD student.”
A “personal interest in the outcome of the defence” can refer to instances where the committee member has already assessed significant parts of the PhD student’s later stage work in a formalized way as might be the case for e.g. 3rd year presentations. More informal feedback at earlier stages and on smaller parts of the PhD dissertation e.g. through research group seminars or informal individual meetings will normally not be considered as a conflict of interest.
Please also keep in mind that the acknowledgement section of the dissertation needs to be formulated in a way that it does not leave any doubt about the impartiality of the assessment committee members.
In reasonable time before the expected submission of the dissertation, the MGMT PhD administration contacts the main supervisor:
· to confirm the expected submission date
· to ask for a proposal for an assessment committee
The proposal should list 3 internationally recognised scholars within the field of the dissertation with the rank of full or associate professorship. The chair of the committee must come from the MGMT faculty. The other two members must be from external institutions, at least one of which from an institution outside of Denmark.
The main supervisor ensures (informally) that the suggested potential members of the committee are willing to undertake the assignment incl. coming to Aarhus University for the defence.
It is important that the main supervisor reasons the proposal by writing 2-4 line as how the research of the proposed members specifically links to the PhD student’s project etc. The proposal must include links to the proposed members CVs and their email addresses.
The main supervisor forwards the proposal for the assessment committee to the Head of the MGMT PhD programme, cc the MGMT PhD administration.
In case of doubt, do not hesitate to get in contact with the Head of the MGMT PhD programme.
Being a PhD student at the Department of Management means that you have up to 40,000 DKK in your general PhD budget (if you were enrolled on 1 Sep. 2022 or later) to spend during your PhD study for e.g.:
Shortly after enrolment, new PhD students will be asked to provide a budget for their entire PhD period. The budget is made in collaboration with your supervisor(s). The budget can of course change during the enrolment period to reflect needed changes.
Before any purchase you must obtain a signature on an Expense Form or a Travel Application.
Please read MGMT’s purchase guidelines here. Send the form to expensetravel@mgmt.au.dk. The signed form will be returned to you in an email.
The signed form must be uploaded to RejsUd when you do your expense/travel settlement.
The stay abroad (incl. deviations) must clearly appear from MyPhD, re. Rules and regulations for the PhD degree programme.
Please note that you have to fill in the template “Change of research environment abroad” which you can find here and send it to bss.hr@au.dk no later than one week before the stay abroad starts. You can find more details here under Important.
MGMT co-financing:
The max. amount you can apply for is 30,000 DKK (or 40,000 DKK if you are accompanied by children). Apply in good time before your stay abroad begins.
Application procedure:
Send an email to the head of the MGMT PhD programme, cc. the MGMT PhD administration and attach the following documentation:
You can apply for co-financing for:
You cannot apply for co-financing for (have to be covered by your ordinary salary):
Deficit guarantee:
If the MGMT co-financing cannot cover your expenses, you can apply for additional funding from external funds. Once you have sent applications to at least five different external funds, you can apply for a deficit guarantee from the department, up to a max. of 30,000 DKK.
Application procedure:
First, send applications for additional funding of your stay abroad to at least five different external funds.
Examples of funds:
Also have a look at “How to finance a research stay abroad” and “Research Support Office”. Always carefully check that you fulfil the stipulations laid down for applying at the specific fond, e.g. some of the funds only support Danish citizens.
Second, send an application for a deficit guarantee to the head of the MGMT PhD programme, cc. the MGMT PhD administration and attach the following to document your applications to external funds:
All external funding that you may get has to be spent before the MGMT co-financing. Also, please note that a deficit guarantee implies that any amount that you will be granted from external funds is going to be deducted from the potential deficit guarantee.
MGMT funding opportunities for extraordinary PhD expenses
a) in early stage of PhD process
MGMT PhD students in the early stage of their PhD process can apply for a limited amount of funding to cover expenses in relation to data collection and analysis. To be eligible for this funding, the PhD student and the main supervisor have to document that the main supervisor cannot provide funding for this purpose, that no external funding is available elsewhere for this purpose, and that data collection and analysis cannot be covered through the ordinary PhD budget.
Examples of extraordinary expenses in relation to data collection and analysis in the early stage of the PhD can be:
What to do? Please send a motivated application including a budget, where you specify that the costs cannot be covered by neither the PhD budget nor any other funding, and a letter of support from your main supervisor to the PhD programme chair Birte Asmuß, cc the programme support Annette Hein Bengtson.
In case of questions, do not hesitate to contact the programme chair and programme support.
b) in final stage of PhD process
MGMT PhD students can apply for a limited amount of funding to cover extraordinary expenses in the final stage of their PhD process, if their ordinary PhD budget has been spent completely.
Examples of extraordinary expenses in the final stage of the PhD can be:
What to do? Please send a motivated application including a budget and a letter of support from your supervisor to the PhD programme chair Birte Asmuß, cc the programme support Annette Hein Bengtson.
If you apply for conference funding, please also include a letter of acceptance of conference presentation and letter of motivation for relevance of conference presentation. In case of questions, do not hesitate to contact the programme chair and programme support.
Please note that as a starting point, each PhD student can only receive ONE grant in total.
All PhD students at MGMT have to present their PhD project yearly (approximately after 1 year, 2 years and 3 years). The purpose of the presentation is to develop the PhD projects.
1st and 2nd year presentations
The PhD students present their project to demonstrate progress and quality of the research project, and their ability to present research. The PhD students present in front of their supervisors (at least one has to be present) and two appointed discussants. The department faculty is invited.
The PhD students have 15 min. for their presentation. Two field committee members will act as discussants (max. 10 minutes each). The remaining time (10 minutes) is for Q&A from other presentation participants.
Especially for the 1st year presentation
The PhD students are asked to hand in a short report (no more than 6-8 pages; a standard page is defined as 2,400 characters including spaces) containing a status of the thesis work, choice of theory and research design, collected/planned data and (if possible) preliminary results.
The report should also be an update of the PhD project description and thus a finalization of the PhD plan addressing a thorough update of the key elements outlined in the BSS internal guidelines ‘Rules and regulations for the PhD programme’ section 8.2.
Especially for the 2nd year presentation
At least one (draft) article or, if writing a monograph, a chapter has to be submitted. It makes more sense to provide feedback on a paper ready to be submitted (or a finished chapter), but the submitted work may also be work-in-progress. The presentation should be based on the submitted article/chapter but the presentation should also seek to establish the connection between the submitted paper and the PhD project as a whole.
Also, to be handed in prior to the presentation is a one page account of the more administrative progress of the PhD project (i.e. courses, stay abroad, etc.).
Deadlines
Submit to the MGMT PhD field committee + your discussants (if not a member of the MGMT PhD field committee) + your supervisors + Annette Hein Bengtson.
3rd year presentation
The main supervisor is responsible that the 3rd year presentation is arranged and carried out prior to the handing in of the PhD dissertation. This involves to select two discussants and have their consent to act as such. In order to ensure that there is no potential conflict of interest in regard to the PhD assessment committee, please be aware of the following when selecting discussants for the 3rd year presentation: As specified in the PhD guidelines on assessment committees (see menu above), a personal interest in the outcome of the defence can refer to instances where the committee member has already assessed significant parts of the PhD student’s later stage work in a formalized way as might be the case for e.g. 3rd year presentations. More informal feedback at earlier stages and on smaller parts of the PhD dissertation e.g. through research group seminars or informal individual meetings will normally not be considered as a conflict of interest.
When the discussants and a date and time have been decided upon, please send this information to Annette Hein Bengtson together with a title and short abstract from the PhD student. Annette will then send an invitation to the MGMT faculty. Please note that it is the main supervisor’s responsibility to lead the 3rd year presentation incl. of defining time slots for the presentation and comments by the discussants.
From ‘MSc IN ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION AT AARHUS UNIVERSITY, SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES September 2014’ (pp. 77-78)
12. PRE-PHD - PART OF THE 4+4 PROGRAMME
To be considered for admission, students must hold a relevant bachelor’s degree and must have completed course work corresponding to 60 ECTS credits in one of the MSc specializations in Economics and Business Administration offered at the School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University. The 4+4 programme requires 4+4 PhD students to complete their Master’s degree within the first two years of the 4+4 PhD degree programme (i.e. during the first two years students are enrolled in the Master’s as well as the PhD degree programmes). On condition that all requirements are fulfilled, students will achieve the master’s degree. For the remaining two years, students are enrolled as PhD students only. Read more about application etc.
4+4 PhD programme
The evaluation method described below exclusively applies to students enrolled in the 4+4 PhD programme, i.e. in the ‘pre-PhD phase’.
For students enrolled in this programme at Department of Management, the remaining 60 ECTS of the MSc degree consists of the following three elements:
For students enrolled in this programme at Department of Economics, the remaining 60 ECTS of the MSc degree consists of the following three elements:
Based on the MSc thesis material and readings from the two PhD methods courses, an oral exam (involving a qualified 4+4 experienced external examiner) will take place at the end of the second year thus completing the MSc part of the 4+4 programme. All in all, the two written assignments should not exceed 50 A4 pages (2400 characters incl. of spaces).
The objective of the Master thesis:
The student should be able to:
Method of instruction: Supervision as agreed with supervisors.
The subject for the Master thesis must be worked out individually. The oral exam will be the basis for assessing the thesis and the readings from the two PhD courses. The oral defence takes 45 minutes.
A supervision agreement is not a contract but a guide to achieve good alignment of mutual expectations between you as a PhD student, your main supervisor and your co-supervisor.
The document aims to help supervisors and PhD students to align expectations in relation to the supervision process. We recommend that you use the document during the upstart but also later on during the PhD process.
Please always upload the latest version of the supervision agreement to MyPhD.
Download the guide at this link.