PhD co-operation between IME and HSBA

Background and purpose

IME has recently established a joint PhD co-operation with the Hamburg School of Business Administration (HSBA), which will start immediately. Since HSBA is a 'University of Applied Science' and not a public university, they have not the authorization to award doctoral degrees for their PhD-students. Hence, they are looking for international co-operation institutions which are allowed to award these doctoral degrees for their PhD-students. Thereby, all arising expenses for the external cooperation institution will be covered by the HSBA.

About the HSBA

The HSBA was founded in 2004 by Hamburg’s Chamber of Commerce. As a state-recognized third-level institution, it offers for almost 840 students part-time master’s degrees (i.e., MSc Global Management and Governance, MBA Honorable Leadership, MBA Corporate Management, and MBA Shipping) and dual bachelor’s degrees (i.e., BSc Business Administration, BSc Business Informatics, BSc Logistics Management, BSc Maritime Management, and B.Sc. Media Management), in which students alternate between blocks of theory at university and practice at one of more than 250 cooperating companies. Excellent ranking results, the course accreditations by the FIBAA as well as the institutional accreditation by the German Council of Science and Humanities testify to the high quality of the HSBA.

About the PhD co-operation

The outline of the PhD cooperation includes that PhD candidates obtain supervision at the HSBA and at SDU. The PhD degree will be granted by the SDU where the student is formally enrolled, i.e., all formal requirements of the PhD programme of the SDU have to be fulfilled by the PhD candidate. The application and selection process of potential PhD candidates will be done by the HSBA and undergoes strict quality assurance and always needs approval by the SDU.

Benefits of the PhD co-operation for IME

The potential PhD cooperation with the HSBA provides several benefits for IME, for example:

• Higher number of externally financed PhD-students enrolled at IME
• Publications of results of additional PhD-student projects in leading peer-reviewed journals in the corresponding research field (i.e., international visibility of IME and SDU)
• Access to several of the 250 HSBA companies and hence corresponding company data for empirical research projects
• Starting point for setting-up an international network with HSBA and other partner universities of the HSBA (e.g., joint third-party funding applications)