After coming back from the cruise last week, I had another sleepless night
(this seems to be a habit) during which I marshaled in my mind more
arguments for appealing the examiners' decision. I prepared quite a long
document that my supervisor has yet to see and so it has not been sent yet
to the business school. But I can post an interim version here....
On May 20 2024, the viva examination of my revised thesis, "Examining ERP enhancement management in Israeli SMEs" was held. The thesis was rejected; in the words of the examiners, "the thesis does not attain the contribution threshold". As such, it would appear that the actual viva examination was irrelevant as the decision was made on the contents of the thesis. Despite the fact that the appeals process does not allow one to question the academic judgement of the examiners, there are several external factors that should be taken into account:
- The DBA process consists of several steps, where each step is dependent on the evaluation and feedback of the DBA research committee. After the decision to demand a heavily revised thesis after the first viva, the thesis was never again reviewed by the research committee. Had the research committee examined the revised thesis, they might have provided feedback that would have helped the thesis to "attain the contribution threshold".
- After the first viva, the examiners created a document entitled "List of recommendations" that gave the impression that following the recommendations faithfully would result in an acceptable thesis. The only reference to the research questions was "Revisit the research questions and ensure that they are achievable using the research approach and methods adopted". No mention was made that these questions would not produce results that "attain the contribution threshold".
- There is no prior research in the literature that asked these questions; there is no prior research in the general area of the research topic that is conducted in SMEs; there is no prior research in the general area of the topic that is conducted in companies using the given ERP system. These points were made both in the thesis and in the viva examination.
- After the first viva examination, the examiners were willing to award the Master of Research degree for the thesis as it then stood. After two years and a great deal of hard work, the revised thesis, whose improved quality was noted by the examiners, was still only worth a Master of Research degree. One of the examiners noted that the thesis contained "important work". This seems to be contradictory to the examiners' findings.
- Although the following is what might be termed "hearsay" in a court of law, here is a question asked on the Academia Stack Exchange web site: "Is it ok to have a PhD thesis with shortcomings and inaccuracies?" One of the comments reads: "People forget that a PhD is a 'learning degree'. Too often, completion is treated as the end, when really it is only just the beginning. If you learned something and can express that you know how or why errors occurred and what they mean for your work, then you have proved you justify being awarded your PhD. A PhD is about the process [emphasis mine], not the end result." The point is made several times during the DBA courses that the degree is an apprenticeship in research and is not expected to produce a world-shattering result.
- The suspicion exists that not "attaining the contribution threshold" was not because of the research or the methods used but rather that one of the conclusions of the research was that essentially there is no difference between the process undertaken when implementing a new ERP system and deploying an enhancement in the post-implementation stage. This conclusion could not have been predicted in advance and only became clear after the research had been completed. A negative result can be just as important as a positive result. Would the contribution threshold have been met had this conclusion been omitted?
I contend that there is a discrepancy in standards between the DBA research committee and the examiners, neither of whom have connections to the Edinburgh Business School.
This day in history:
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 483 | Dubrovnik log (0) | Holiday, Dubrovnik | |
| 596 | Edinburgh log (1): Touring the city | Holiday, Edinburgh | |
| 718 | Pompeii (Sorrento log 3) | Holiday, Sorrento, Italy | |
| 864 | Vinyl log 14 - 14 June | Sandy Denny, Van der Graaf Generator, 1975, Vinyl log, Fairport Convention, The Band |
No comments:
Post a Comment