A qualitative review of doctoral dissertations on management in Taiwan

The doctoral dissertation is viewed as the capstone to the doctoralprogram. This study reviews the research topics and methodologies ofmanagement doctoral dissertations from 1988 to 1994 in Taiwan. The results ofthe qualitative analysis of the 120 dissertations are reported as follows:(1) financial management attracted the greatest share of the attention of thedoctoral students, followed by information management; (2) over half of thedissertations were discipline based with mathematics, psychology, economics,and computer science being the most common disciplines; (3) over half of thedissertations were predominantly causal; (4) in the case of empiricaldissertations, survey methods were mostly used, while mathematical modelingwas frequently applied in the case of the non-empirical studies; and (5) mostof the empirical studies involved the information industry. In addition,future directions for management doctoral research are also provided.