Getting into the System

Choosing the Topic of Research

By now most of you would have at least decided on the subject area that you wish to do your research in. For those of you who contemplate doing a PhD in management, you may have considered doing a thesis on finance, organisational behaviour, marketing, operations management, corporate strategy, etc. Your choice of topic should be governed by:

• your interest (and not of your parents or friends or imposed by the supervisor)
• future aspirations (e.g. to lecture in that subject area)
• market demand for that subject
• past education and experience
• whether or not the area has previously been well researched by others.

You are often alone in your research, and doing something that you enjoy helps the process very much. Often in times of crisis, this is the major factor that can greatly affect your decision to either continue persevering, or to give up altogether. PhD courses have high drop-out rates (which is more common than actually failing the oral examinations) as the initial enthusiasm will eventually decline. The decision to do a PhD and the subject area of research should be your own and not that of your parents or friends. It is about time that you exercise your right on what you intend to do, not only for the next three or four years, but for the rest of your life. If your future aspiration is to become a lecturer, then the topic of your research should be in a subject area that you will enjoy teaching. It should also be one that is popular and fairly established such as organisational behaviour, human resources, marketing, finance, etc. Otherwise you will end up having knowledge that is not valued by a large section of the community. One has to be pragmatic about this. Your knowledge must be marketable. In other words, you must be able to generate income through your expertise and knowledge in that area. After all, that is what the knowledge economy is all about. There is little point in being a so-called expert in an area that is regarded as trivial (rightly or wrongly) to your customers/students. As for me personally, the most important requirement is that the knowledge that I gain must be marketable outside the university, i.e. it must add value to organisations and individuals and help them enhance their business and/or personal lives. In this regard, I differ from the traditional academic who is only looking at employment within the university. I can say that a few lecturers, particularly in other fields, have gone into areas so remote and detached from the real world, that the only place they can make a living is within the deep recesses of universities.

You might want to do a PhD in a subject that you have some prior knowledge and experience in, as you may not wish to start from scratch. This will certainly boost your confidence and reduce the time required to complete your PhD. On the other hand, you may decide to go into an area that is somewhat unfamiliar to you—area in which you have little experience or knowledge. You may want to do this because you have decided to change your line of work, or area of specialisation. This was exactly what I did. I myself decided to do a PhD in applied psychology at work, although I did not possess a degree in psychology. As such, a great deal of my first year was spent reading psychology textbooks all by myself. You may not wish to do the same. Similarly, a classmate of mine at the Manchester Business School wanted to develop a software program to help in financial analyses but he had no prior knowledge in computer programming. According to him, he spent two years of his PhD programme just learning programming. He was still doing his PhD when I attended my convocation in July 2001.

You may decide to choose an area that already has been well researched by others. The question that you may ask yourself is, ‘How can I be original when other researchers have already conducted and published research in that area?’ Another question that you may ask yourself is, ‘How can I contribute something new in an area that has already been well researched by others, i.e. how can I contribute to knowledge?’ Do not be afraid to choose a subject that is popular. For example, organisational commitment, management of change, culture and job satisfaction, are current business issues. This means that a lot of information is available. This is an asset rather than a liability. By having a great deal of previously published research readily available to you, you will be able to cite more than enough articles in your literature review. Not only that, you can and you must critically analyse the methodology of the previous research and come up with your recommendations, i.e. a new methodology which will be used in your current research that overcomes the problems or criticisms of previous research. You may wonder how you will be able to find fault with previous studies especially those that have been published in reputed international journals by world-renowned professors. Rest assured, it is possible. In fact, this is exactly what I have managed to accomplish in my PhD research. The next questions that you may ask are, ‘What happens if I'm not able to do this?’ and ‘Is it a necessary and critical requirement?’ Frankly, I'm not certain if all examiners are of the view that this condition is mandatory, because there was some debate about this when I was Chairman of the PhD committee. However, what I am certain of is, if you are able to fulfil this condition, your chances of passing the viva is greatly increased.

On the other hand, there are some students who have chosen a topic primarily because not much research has been conducted in that area. This in fact, was done by one of my classmates at the Manchester Business School. When he presented his proposal, there were objections by the chairman who said that it is not sufficient merely to argue that not enough research has been done. There should be some critical analyses of previous research which justifies conducting the new research proposed. Undaunted, my classmate went on to do his research and completed his PhD in three years (he was among the first in the class to complete his doctorate). But I do recall that his literature review was rather short simply because not enough studies have been conducted in that area. He even had to cite other seemingly unrelated studies and draw analogies with his research. In other words, he had to exercise a certain degree of lateral thinking. So it is clear that this option is not a short cut, and taking this route presents the traveller with its own set of challenges.

Choosing the Institution or the Supervisor

When I was contemplating doing a PhD, a well-known professor once advised me, ‘Select the supervisor, not the institution.’ He added, ‘First of all, do a Literature search. Find out who is influential in the subject area or topic that you intend to do your research in. Then, write to him or her and forward your research proposal.’ The rationale behind this is that the supervisor is the person with whom you will be dealing for the most part of your PhD course. Furthermore, even leading institutions may not have an academic staff that is considered to be an expert in the area that you wish to do your research in. It is certainly a privilege to be a student of well-known people such as Vroom (a well-known figure in organisational behaviour. Some might even be too intimidated to write to him). Valuable lessons can be learnt through their expert guidance. You will obviously benefit by having such a supervisor. However, it does not mean that all other supervisors are not qualified. What you do not want is to have a supervisor who knows little about your subject area and is only able to correct your grammar and spelling mistakes. That may sound ridiculous, but I have actually heard my friends saying exactly that about their supervisors. Such supervisors offer little assistance.

Apart from expert knowledge, personal compatibility is also important in choosing your supervisor. As you will have to communicate with your supervisor for the next three to eight years, it is vital that you are able to get along with him or her. So, how can you ensure this? Well, quite easy really. You may choose someone whom you already know personally—perhaps your lecturer in your Masters programme. Of course, he or she must be a PhD holder (This seems to be a requirement of University of Malaya, although not of some universities in the UK! The rationale for the stance taken by University of Malaya is that only a person who has undergone the PhD process himself or herself is competent enough to guide a PhD student. I believe that this is generally true—and with generalisations, there are obviously some exceptional individuals). If you have sat through an entire course under this lecturer and found him or her to be a reasonable person (i.e. one whom you think you can work with), you may approach him or her to be your supervisor. This in fact was done by a few PhD students of mine—they were previously my MBA students.

Although choosing the supervisor rather than the institution may be the ideal method, there can be several reasons why one should write to the institution and not the supervisor. Schedules of internationally renowned professors are extremely tight. They are hard pressed for time and probably have many PhD students under them. Chances of such professors accepting students who write to them directly are slim. To be accepted, your research proposal has to be outstanding. There must be something in your proposal that makes it stand out (favourably) among the crowd. It takes a great deal of time (perhaps even more than a year) to come up with such a proposal, if one can do it at all! Remember that at this stage you will probably have to write your proposal without any guidance, since you do not yet have a supervisor. Therefore, it is often easier to write to a well-established institution, indicating your area of interest. The person or committee in charge of research degrees in the university will probably then speak to the relevant professor or lecturer and seek his or her consent. I myself chose the institution rather than the supervisor. I applied to the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, and sent in a proposal. The research degrees committee chose one of their lecturers (Dr Colin Ingleton, a chartered psychologist) who was the most appropriate person based on my proposal.

If you wish to seek more information or wish to apply to any particular university in the UK, you should visit the British Council. There are directories with addresses of universities. There are also the standard forms to fill in. When I first applied in 1996, I had to fill in a form and was able to apply to only three universities. You should go there yourself to check on the latest regulations as they may change from time to time. Alternatively, if you wish to do your PhD in the US, you should go to MACEE (Malaysian-American Commission on Education Exchange). In other words, the offices that you have to visit to enquire are the same as those for Masters and undergraduate courses. If you have done either your Masters or undergraduate degree overseas, then you will have some experience in this matter.

Changing Your Topic

Question: What if your supervisor suggests that you to do something different from what you have indicated in your proposal?

• Do you ignore his suggestion and carry out your research exactly as laid out in your proposal?, or
• Do you accept his advice, abandon your earlier proposal and follow his suggestion?

The correct decision will depend on three main factors:

1. The degree of difference between your proposal and that of your supervisor's.
2. The strength of your desire to carry out research as per your proposal.
3. Whether there are any cogent reasons for you not accepting his proposal.

If there is not much difference between your proposal and your supervisor's, my recommendation is to follow your supervisor's. This is particularly so if the topic remains the same (e.g. job satisfaction) and if the supervisor is merely suggesting that you look at it from another perspective or use a slightly different methodology. Your supervisor has probably spotted potential problems in your proposal (problems not immediately apparent to you but which he has been able to spot by virtue of his greater experience and knowledge). Since he is generous enough to offer you an alternative, by all means, accept the gift gracefully and be thankful. Not all supervisors are willing to do this. Some supervisors may just say that the research that you proposed is not sufficient to be awarded a PhD without offering any alternatives. In short, my recommendation to you is that if your supervisor's suggestion does not drastically involve changing your proposal, accept his suggestion. The consequences of not doing so can be disastrous for you. A classmate of mine was in such a situation. He refused to change his proposal even though his supervisor had suggested an alternative. He worked on his thesis for a year and presented his research proposal before a committee. His proposal was rejected.

Changing Your Supervisor

Although I have recommended that you should adopt your supervisor's suggestions, it does not necessarily mean that you should always forgo your ambitions and ideas for your supervisor's. There may be circumstances where you should not accept your supervisor's proposal. Such circumstances are:

1. If the subject area is totally different. For example, you plan to do a research in organisational behaviour and your supervisor asks you to do a research on marketing. This is rare, but not impossible.
2. If the topic is different e.g. if you wish to do research on personality and satisfaction but your supervisor asks you to do a research on culture or R&D. If learning about R&D is not your cup of tea and you do not wish to be an academic specialising in that area, then you should refuse.
3. If there are other lecturers readily available, within the university or outside, in your area of interest.

In such cases the proper course of action is to change your supervisor . This can easily be done if the new supervisor is attached to the same university and he agrees to be your new supervisor. However, if there is no one within the university who is able and willing to act in this role, then you may have to find someone from another university. If you are able to find a supervisor in a different university who is willing to accept you as his student, then you will have to apply to that university for a transfer. Now this may be a little more complex in Malaysia. You may have to resign from a PhD programme in one university and enrol in another programme in a different university. If there are special requirements, such as attending compulsory courses in the latter university, then the student may have to start the PhD course all over again. In other words, the student's completion may be delayed. However, this disruption can be minimised if the decision to change the supervisor is taken at the early stages of the PhD programme.

Having More Than One Supervisor

There may be instances where a student needs more than one supervisor, either simultaneously or consecutively. This may happen where the student is doing an interdisciplinary study and there is nobody available considered to be expert enough in both fields. Desirable though it may seem (because he has two supervisors for the price of one), there is the potential for violation of one of the classic management principles—unity of command. A student may find himself torn between two supervisors who give contradicting instructions.

Another scenario is one where a student changes his supervisor halfway through his course. This was exactly what happened to my classmate. He wanted to do a thesis in finance that involved writing his own computer software program. He had one supervisor who was knowledgeable in computing for the first two years and another supervisor who was an expert in finance for the remainder of the period. For him, having two supervisors was a necessity, not a luxury.

Should You Do Research Locally or Overseas, Full-Time or Part-Time?

If you reside in Malaysia, you may wish to do your PhD locally rather than overseas, primarily because of the lower costs. University fees in the UK, US and Australia are obviously higher compared with Malaysian universities. Furthermore, you can work while doing your PhD in Malaysia, thus minimising opportunity costs. Malaysians will find it more difficult to get work permits in the UK, US and Australia if they are studying there. They are also able to minimise disruptions to their family life by staying at home. Their spouses and children do not have to face the inconvenience of having to find new jobs and schools, respectively. I can safely say that these are the main reasons why many of my friends have opted to do their PhDs in Malaysia. Of course there are other reasons why people would want to do their PhDs overseas, e.g. their courses are sponsored and they have young families.

However, there are some drawbacks to doing a PhD course in a local university. The major one is the difficulty in obtaining journal articles in their full versions. Some universities may subscribe to electronic journals, i.e. full versions of articles which can be obtained via the Internet. However, I have noticed that electronic articles in management rarely go beyond the previous five years. You may need to go as far back as twenty to thirty years for purposes of your research. Other databases (in the form of CD-ROMs such as ABI/INFORM) may only contain the citation and abstracts. It was much simpler obtaining full versions of articles in the UK. If the university that I was studying in did not have one, then the library staff would arrange for an interlibrary loan. Usually the article was traced to another university where it was photocopied and sent to my university library. Another major difficulty is obtaining the more obscure books. British universities are well stocked with useful books. Again, if the book that I required was not stocked in my university library, I would request the library staff for the book to be borrowed from another university library, on an interlibrary loan. Students are usually allowed to borrow items for three weeks. There are far more universities in the UK compared to a developing country like Malaysia and therefore one would have greater chances in the UK of successfully locating a book. I remember when I was doing my MBA thesis in Malaysia, I wanted to refer to an authoritative book on job satisfaction. I was informed at that time that the book was not available in any of the universities in Malaysia. On the other hand, the book was readily available in the University of Manchester library. My supervisor even had his own personal copy in his room!

However, when I was writing my first book in 2003, there were few improvements in the availability of databases in public university libraries. When I was doing my PhD in the UK, I relied extensively on the Social Sciences Citation Index or SSCI. The SSCI is one of the most comprehensive databases that I have encountered. For me it was virtually a one-stop search station. If an article I was looking for did not surface, I can be fairly confident that it did not exist (or at least not in reputed journals). Thus I did not have to do multiple searches in multiple databases. The problem with doing such multiple searches is that you may have 200 articles from one database and another 200 articles from another database. But you do not have a total of 400 articles because when you compare the two lists, you find that about 120 articles were reported in both databases. Also, a lot of time is wasted reconciling the two lists. If you use more than two databases, your problems will be compounded. The SSCI overcomes this problem by being a comprehensive one-stop station. However, the only drawback with the SSCI is that they do not have the full-length version for all the articles—only the abstracts and citations were available (at the time when I did my PhD). Thus you may still have to trace the full-length article from the hard copy of the journal in the library. But my argument is you may not need the full-length journals of all the articles cited. The abstracts provided by the SSCI give a very good starting point. I believe that most of the local universities have adopted either the SSCI or its equivalent (in their view). So it seems that research is becoming easier to conduct in Malaysia. As for other universities in Asia, I am not able to comment specifically—you will have to come to your own conclusions.

Both local and overseas PhD courses can be done full-time or part-time in most universities. Generally speaking, part-time students take nearly twice as long to complete their PhDs compared to full-time students. However I think the attrition rate of part-time students is higher (although I have not conducted any analysis of this). I believe this is true because the part-time students can be easily distracted from their PhDs, due to the demand of their jobs, or simply boredom since the part-time PhD takes twice as long. Probably the main reason for the diminishing initial enthusiasm is the length of time that one has to spend working on a single problem. A PhD requires a lot of thought and reflection. The thought process can be frequently disrupted if one has a thousand and one things to do at the office, and twice as much housework to do at home. Another danger facing part-time students is that their research may be rendered obsolete even before they complete their PhDs. There is a real danger of somebody else out there doing exactly the same thing but finishing and publishing his work earlier (I had nightmares of this while I was doing my PhD!). Another possibility is that whilst a student is doing his or her PhD, an article may have been published by someone renowned in that area that coincidentally criticises a methodology or theory that the student is relying upon. I heard a story of a PhD student who after being a full-time PhD student for two years decided to take just one year off to work. During that time an article was published by someone else that, by coincidence, raised serious theoretical issues in this student's research. The response from the student's supervisor was, ‘Well, that is just too bad.’ The student never got his PhD.

I have came across students who initially did their PhDs full-time for a year or more in the UK and then returned to Malaysia to complete the course. Their initial intention was perhaps to save money. However these students ended up taking a longer time getting their PhDs than if they had stayed in the UK. Furthermore, a great deal of the money that was saved was subsequently lost by having to pay for frequent flights to and from the UK. The student cannot rely merely on emails and telephone calls. Regular face-to-face interaction with the supervisor is needed in order for the student and the supervisor to spark ideas off each other. As the saying goes, ‘Out of sight, out of mind’. The supervisor whose student has left the country may feel that the student is not committed enough to the PhD process. Thus lesser attention may be given to him or her.

Despite the pitfalls facing the part-time student, you may still wish to do your PhD on a part-time basis. In that case, I offer you the following advice:

1. Set aside regular periods of your time for your PhD work. Make sure the timetable is realistic, then stick to it. A realistic target would be every alternate weekend plus one or two evenings during the week day. It would be unrealistic to set a target of every evening plus every weekend for most people. Remember, a PhD course done part-time may take between five and eight years.
2. Choose a research topic that is related to your work. This would be easier for lecturers. They need only to choose a topic that they are currently teaching. Knowledge gained by reading research articles can be incorporated into lectures. However remember that there is a limit to this as a PhD research is very focused. For instance, you are a lecturer of organisational behaviour and may want to do research into a particular aspect of organisational culture. Organisational culture is usually only one of the ten or eighteen topics in a typical syllabus on organisational behaviour.
3. If you are a university lecturer and doing a PhD locally, you may choose a lecturer from your own university. Logistically speaking, this would make meetings easier to conduct. Another reason is that you probably do not have to pay any fees, or the fees charged are nominal. Thus one can achieve drastic savings in cost. I feel that choosing a PhD supervisor from your own faculty whom you already know and are able to get along well with would be of great help. However, there are some doctorate holders I know who are reluctant to accept their colleagues or anyone of their friends as PhD students, for fear that their friendships might compromise objectivity and effective supervision.

Due to rising costs and increasing demands of families, more and more people in Malaysia have opted to do their PhDs locally. This is especially so where the student is self-financed. This is because the education sector (globally and especially in Malaysia) is one of the lowest paid. The nominal increase in income is not sufficient to pay for the expenses incurred while doing your PhD overseas.