Empirical Research
Why the Doctor of Management Degree
By Darrell Norman Burrell, Ph.D.
Jul 31, 2007 - 9:46:48 AM

Why the Doctor of Management Degree

Makes Sense as an Option for Educational Leaders

by Darrell Norman Burrell

Address: 330 Hidden Creek Lane, Warrenton, VA 20186

Phone: (540) 842-6020

Editorial contact e-mail: darrell.burrell@yahoo.com

Bio- Darrell Norman Burrell is a faculty member with Averett University in Virginia. He has graduate degrees in Human Resources Management, Higher Education Administration, Sales and Marketing Management, and Organizational Management. He is also a Presidential Management Fellow in the federal government with over 17 years of combined management experience in the academia, government, and corporate America. He can be contacted at dnburrell@excite.com

Abstract

Why the Doctor of Management Degree

Makes Sense as an Option for Educational Leaders

Learning to be an effective leader is a complex undertaking. Cognitive theories would outline that learning is a process of relating new information to previously learned information. Think of the leadership challenges facing the President of Virginia Tech University in the aftermath of the campus shootings. Often the degree of choice to develop educational administrators is usually the Doctor of Education in Administration and the Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Administration.

Most traditional master’s level and doctoral leadership programs teach students to use a form of thinking that involves “conventional wisdom.” The problem with that kind of thinking is that scenarios can change which can make leadership decision making reactionary instead of forward thinking or creative.

In contrast to the traditional Ph.D. and Ed.D., which is geared toward the engagement of operations theory and research, the advanced leadership knowledge involved in the Doctor of Management (DM) encompasses advanced leadership training that is practical and focused on leadership’s complex impact on improving organizational culture and decision making.

Introduction

Learning to be an effective leader is a complex undertaking. Cognitive theories would outline that learning is a process of relating new information to previously learned information. Think of the leadership challenges of being a superintendent or specifically the leadership challenges that faced the President of Virginia Tech University after the campus shootings occurred. Consider the management perplexities of being a university president with campus safety issues like the ones created in New Orleans by hurricane Katrina. These highly visible leadership jobs require the development of advanced cognitive leadership skills in critical thinking and a doctorate degree to be successful. Often the degree of choice is usually a Doctor of Education in Administration and a Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Administration.

The problem is that most of these programs do not have courses that focus on the development of critical skills that are required to make strategic decisions, develop teams, manage a crisis management, develop organizational strategy, and improve organizational culture. It is important to examine the current curriculum and courses that are used to develop leaders in the K-12, higher education, government, and private industry. Changing market forces, evolving economic forces, and increased global diversity have combined to produce unprecedented organizational change and volatility. These forces have put a spotlight on the leadership crisis with decision making in this country as it relates to leaders in education, politics, and private industry. This is due in part to some poor leadership decision making related to ethical leadership lapses, religious and ethnic discrimination lawsuits, failing performance indicators, and financial mismanagement.

The problem is that most leadership decision making is based off the reality that most leaders review the past or look backward to anticipate the future. They tend to utilize an elementary way of analyzing problems and making decisions. When assumptions are made that assume an instant or pre-selected solution, leaders do not consider other variables, other options or that the variables might change before the solution can be implemented (Sanders, 2002).

Most leaders engage on a linear way of thinking. This thinking follows a certain level of going from A to B to look at issues in the way someone would think and respond if someone asked them to say the alphabet. With linear thinking, leaders tend to work on coming up on one solution based on the consideration of one scenario. Problem solving is viewed like looking at pieces of a puzzle. Once a familiar or logical pattern is discovered, leaders work on putting the pieces together based on the one pattern that is easily established and understood. Most leadership decision making never anticipates that factors or variables that exist today, could change tomorrow.

Most traditional master’s level and doctoral leadership programs in Educational Administration teach doctoral students to use a form of thinking that involves “conventional wisdom.” The problem with that kind of thinking is that scenarios can change which can make leadership decision making reactionary instead of forward thinking or creative. Once a manger finds a solution they think is the best, they tend to stop challenging assumptions and stop considering the “what ifs.” Engaging in this behavior makes management decisions vulnerable to changing variables and a changing environment. To solve problems and critically think, members in management must engage in a cognitive learning self-reflective analysis. This process includes the mental events of their solution building in a manner that questions assumptions in the way that an engineer would engage in prototype testing over the mental events of the and over adding a variety of variables with each test.

University schools of education are facing intense criticism that their traditional M.Ed. (Master of Education), Ed.D. (Doctor of Education) programs in Educational Leadership or Higher Education Administration, and traditional (Doctor of Philosophy) Ph.D. programs fail to teach a curriculum in the development of strategic leaders and critical thinkers. These skills are extremely important to navigate challenges in the areas of change management, crisis management, emergency response, strategic planning, managing diversity, and developing high performance teams. Due to increased technology, enlarged expectations, amplified accountability, and growing workforce diversity, today’s leadership decisions are more complex than they were five years ago.

Graduate university programs that train people for leadership positions in education are inadequate. There should be a creation of new degrees that focus on both management and education. (Jacobson, 2005) The need for today’s education administrators to have more advanced leadership education beyond the master’s degree has become critical, but the traditional Ph.D. and Ed.D. doctoral programs are not providing the best academic training in the critical skill areas needed to lead subordinates in organizations in times of crisis and times of change.

Past premise has been that the typical (M.Ed.) master’s in administration provides a baseline foundation for administrators and managers. However, over time and periods of career advancement, these individuals must renew their knowledge, perhaps in a more formal educational experience than week long executive development courses or leadership institutes offered by universities and international management associations. The logical progression is usually to pursue a traditional Ed.D. or Ph.D. doctoral program.

Organizations and professionals have been so fixated on the value of an MBA and Administration degrees and not the applicability of the courses. The result of this phenomenon is a plethora of managers that cannot manage and make decisions effectively. Graduate education in leadership and administration should be built around the development of effective thinking and cognitive analysis skills that develop four valuable mind sets in managers:

· Reflective mind set - This focuses on the nature of managerial work, the ability to learn from experience, and the historical development of management thought and application.

· The Analytical mind set - This focuses on organizational culture, structure, and strategy, the role of analysis and critical thinking in the manager’s work.

· The Worldly mind set - This focuses on understanding the influence of social and economic forces in the organizations external environment.

· The Collaborative mind set - This involves the skills of influencing and managing people through the effective activities of communicating, motivating, partnering, empowering, challenging, directing, and developing employees.

· The Catalytic mind set - This focuses on the leader’s ability to manage change through positive action and effective decision making. All the mind sets begin with reflection and end with inspiring actions that deliver results (Mintzberg, 1997).

Practitioners who lead organizations have called for reforms in the ways that traditional universities prepare students to solve complex leadership problems in the real world. Organizations no longer want graduates that just know how to explain textbook management theories, they want managers and administrators that can apply book knowledge, critically analyze problems, and come up with “outside of the box” solutions, especially in times of crisis. Higher education administrators and K-12 leaders do not want to learn from individuals that have only been researchers and can only teach book knowledge. They want to learn from doctoral instructors that also have a significant amount of real-world management experience because after the degree is completed, the hiring organization has the expectation that an applicant with a doctorate degree can be an effective leader and decision maker.

The development of critical thinking skills in organizational problem solving refers to attempting to improve the cognitive aspects of the decision making process by overcoming how the effective engagement in the process can be hampered by false paradigms, preconceived notions, biases, and wrong assumptions (Bazerman, 2006).

The Doctor of Management

In contrast to the traditional Ph.D. and Ed.D., which is geared toward the engagement of operations theory and research, the advanced leadership knowledge involved in the Doctor of Management (DM) encompasses advanced cognitive leadership training that is practical and focused on leadership’s complex impact on improving organizational culture and decision making. The degree was first developed in the United States at Case Western Reserve in Ohio in 1995. Since the degree’s creation, several other universities have developed their own programs. Traditional graduate programs that are intended to develop leaders in education, in government, and the public sector, have classes in specific topic areas like finance, law, accounting, budgeting, operations strategy, school supervision, and quantitative research. Most traditional doctoral programs have a less than 50% completion rate and average seven year completion times (Smallwood, 2001).

The Doctor of Management challenges many traditional assumptions in the way that we provide doctoral educational that is intended to develop leaders. The Doctor of Management (DM) takes a progressive academic approach with a curriculum focus on the importance of developing cognitive thinking skills, motivating staff, developing teams, and developing organizational culture with a curriculum that is focused on the development of critical thinking skills. The DM’s focus is on improving the effectiveness of management from an advanced cognitive critical thinking decision making platform that is focused on improving the way that organizations develop strategies and come up with solutions for problems. The DM considers the fact that a leader can have a vast array of technical operations knowledge and can devise the greatest strategy in the world, but without the ability to develop staff and engage in critical thinking skills to deal with emerging problems, long-term organizational success will be limited.

The Doctor of Management is a major departure of traditional doctoral study by enabling executives and administrators to use a combination of pure leadership theory and applied research methods to define, implement, and better evaluate the decision making strategies necessary for organizational growth and organizational survival. This program can be completed in 3-4 years without the student having to leave their full time jobs. These programs are offered in distance learning and non-traditional formats that allow participants from students from all over the world, which creates a rich and diverse learning experience for students. When considering the pending leadership shortages with enormous ongoing retirements of “Baby Boomers” there is a need to develop a growing pipeline new effective leaders in all organizations.

Organizational CEOs, university deans, K-12 principals, college administrators, and education superintendents, through their collective influences, have a fundamental impact on organizational strategy. Therefore their education and reeducation must be part of any ongoing effort to develop organization longevity through leadership development on all levels by improving the way the decisions are made and the way that problems are critically analyzed.

The Doctor of Management offers a curriculum that has the right blend of theory and practice that is facilitated by instructors that have extensive real world management experience. The advantage of completing courses in critical thinking is that students are exposed to new processes that allow them to engage in the practice. The best analogy to explain this premise is to consider the aspects of learning to play the piano. Would you like to learn how to play the piano by just hearing lectures and reading books about how to play, or would you rather learn the theory and then sit with a real piano and practice? The use of case studies as practice in a critical thinking course allows the manager or administrator to practice solving real life problems in a controlled environment where they can grow while learning from the instructor and each other. Unfortunately this kind of classroom instruction not usually offered in traditional doctoral programs in Administration and Management.

Traditional programs often only provide leadership training that exposes students to the aspects of problem solving that is linear. In these traditional programs, students are taught approaches to problem solving which typically begin with statements of current or predicted problems, and move quickly to solutions or remedial steps to fix the outlined deficiencies or create the quickest possible single solution to a problem. These programs teach from a perspective that only looks at the pure book theory and very limited applied research components. Problem solving is taught from a perspective that often ignores the learning that can be gained through exercises that allow students to learn from each other’s collective knowledge and professional experiences. Often assignments focused on leadership decision making are individual and not collaborative, creating solutions that tend to narrowly define and limit the number of possible alternatives for addressing the problem. For example a manager could say, “Our employees need more training,” which is not really a statement or critical analysis of the problem but a solution to as yet be clearly articulated? If left unquestioned from a variety of perspectives, the statement could commit the organization to a course of action that may have little or no desired effect. In most organizations decision making is reactive process of finding the quick solution to problems that arise in an ad hoc approach (Harrison, 1999).

Critical thinking courses help administrators find more creative cognitive based solutions to problems by developing a decision making process that attempts to question assumptions, reduce the impact of biases, and overcome tendencies toward locking in on courses of action before thorough analysis and planning can take place. The critical thinking and leadership development courses offered in the DM programs attempt to build or improve the decision making structure of students and the organization in a whole.

The Value of Critical Thinking Skills

Peter Vaill's book, Learning as a Way of Being: Strategies for Survival in a World of Permanent White Water, presents a view that the traditional study of management and leadership is linear and too narrow. He presents a perspective that the study of management and leadership should be more interdisciplinary and blended with learning experiences from a variety of environments. He presents the commentary that university programs should teach managers and leaders how to incorporate the aspects of learning and development in a variety of aspects in their lives and in their organizations (Vaill, 1996).

In order for any leader to be successful, they need to develop an advanced cognitive understanding of the differences between healthy, unhealthy organizations, and the processes that are vital in changing organizational culture. Managers charged with changing and leading organizations need to develop an understanding of the processes and steps needed in decision making and implementing organizational change. (Beitler, 2006)

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge explains that the only sustainable competitive advantage is a company or organization’s ability to evolve, develop, and learn faster than the competition. This includes developing leaders and employees that engage in critical thinking in the way the problems are solved, strategy is development, and leadership decisions are made (Senge, 1999)
Historically there have not been a variety of options for doctoral study that was driven in theory application, cognitive leadership development, managerial reflection, and critical thinking. Doctor of Management programs that offer courses in these areas in an on-line and weekend formats are now being offered by Webster University in Missouri, The University of Phoenix in Arizona, The University of Maryland University College, Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, George Fox University in Oregon, Colorado Tech University in Colorado Springs. These programs represent the development of applied doctoral programs for working executives and upwardly mobile administrators. These programs provide a rigorous academic experience. They build bridges between the development of high level intellectual thinking skills and the kind of and complex leadership problem solving skills that are vital to managing today’s world, which is greatly influenced by technology and cultural diversity.

These executive doctorate programs were developed to accommodate the manager or educational administrator who is not interested in quitting their full time job to complete a doctorate, as most traditional doctoral programs in Administration, Management, or Educational Leadership require along with an average time of completion of seven years. The admissions committees of these executive programs value students that are employed full time. They attempt to use the course work to create a synergy between knowledge that is gained in the classroom and skills that are developed at work. In these doctoral programs, cognitive learning, workplace learning, and peer learning build on each other.

While the Ph.D. is considered a degree that prepares the graduate to do research, the development of an applied or an executive doctorate like the Doctor of Management (DM) has been the result of academic evolution. The applied or executive doctorate was developed from the understanding of the distinct differences between research and reality when it comes to managing, making leadership decisions, and developing the strategy for complex organizations. The academic approaches used are built on the adult learning theory that focuses more on the academic development needs of the student. These programs place high value on the work experiences and previous knowledge that students bring to the classroom. Traditional doctoral programs focus on the prescribed pedagogical model that assumes that the learner has little value to add to the learning experience and it is the teacher, the textbook, and the classroom lecture that provide the value to the learning experience. (Knowles, 1984)

The Pew Charitable Trust sponsored a survey which conveyed that the training that Ph.D. students receive is not what many of them want and did not do a good job of preparing them for the jobs that they would eventually take. What is significant about these survey results is that most doctoral programs are preparing students to be researchers but most doctoral graduates end up in the practical work world. (Smallwood, 2001)

As leading today’s organizations becomes more global, diverse and complex, there continues to be discussion in the literature of the importance of developing more advanced cognitive leadership skills and critical thinking skills in all administrators. Unfortunately the work and family demands placed on today’s managers and administrators leave little time for traditional advanced education in the traditional fashion on the doctoral level. For many professionals, leadership knowledge enhancement is pursued through weekly professional development courses and through reading professional periodicals. These educational exercises, though very valuable, are fragmented segments, and are often not re-enforced through application and applied research.

The institutions offering Doctor of Management programs that focus on improving cognitive decision making are trailblazers in the development of non-traditional doctoral programs that provide the skills that are required to lead in today’s organizations. These programs are unique on the doctoral level because they are designed to be more progressive alternatives for doctoral study for the working executive that would not find the courses or format of a traditional doctoral program viable.

These Doctor of Management programs are set up to not just recruit students, but to also make those students become graduates with sound cognitive leadership decision making abilities. The critical thinking courses offered in these programs provides students with the tools that vital in cognitive problem solving. These courses attempt to improve decision making by teaching the value of experience, by showing how to minimize the influence of bias, by teaching to question assumptions, by showing the value of gaining the perspective of others, and by overcoming the agendas of others.

According to a recent report by the Association of American Universities, when designing graduate programs and advising graduate students, university administrators and faculty members must hold the interests and development needs of students’ paramount. (Leatherman, 2001)

The Doctor of Management is a result of collaboration between industry and academia in the development of a program with relevant curriculum in leadership decision making for practitioners. The university administrators and faculty members that are offering the DM did not arbitrarily decide on what type of doctoral program was needed, but these institutions went to actual companies and organizational leaders to get input. The universities that developed these programs did something in their development that many universities rarely do. They went to the consumer and the marketplace and asked what kind of courses were needed and created a degree program with needed curriculums in cognitive critical thinking skill development with case study driven teaching approaches. As the challenges of leadership in this global society become more complex it will be critical for leaders in all levels of management to upgrade their cognitive knowledge toolkit and these programs will play a vital role in that process.

The Doctor of Management programs’ curriculum asks the question, if the definition of management is getting work done through sound cognitive decision making that effectively influences people, then why are traditional doctoral programs in administration have no courses that focus on the development of cognitive critical thinking leadership skills. http://www.academicleadership.org/pages/Submissions.shtmlitive critical thinking skills and organizational development?

Box- Information on Regionally Accredited Distance Learning DM Programs.

Bazerman, Max. (2006). Judgment in Managerial Decision Making. Wiley and Sons.

Beitler, Michael. (2006). Strategic Organizational Change. Practitioner Press International.

Burke, Joseph, “Graduate Schools Should Require Internships for Teaching.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2001.

Harrison, Michael. (1999). Organizational Diagnosis and Assessment. Sage Publications.

Jacobson, Jennifer. “Why Do So Many People Leave Graduate School without a Ph.D.?” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 1, 2001.

Jacobson, Jennifer. “Arthur Levine Calls for Abolition of the Ed.D. Degree and Vast Overhaul of Education Schools.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 15, 2005.

Knowles, Malcolm. (1984). Adragogy in Action: Applying Principles of Adult Education Learning. Knowles Family Trust.

Leatherman, Courtney. “Graduate Student Push for Reforms.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 4, 1998.

Mintzberg, Henry. “The New Management Mind-Set.” Leader to Leader, Spring 1997.

Nelson, Cary and Lovitts, Barbara. “10 Ways to Keep Graduate Students from Quitting.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 29, 2001.

Sanders, Irene. “To Fight Terror, We Can't Think Straight” The Washington Post, May 5, 2002.

Senge, Peter. (1999) The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, Random House.

Smallwood, Scott. “Survey Points to Mismatch in Doctoral Program: Ph.D. Students Aren’t Trained for the Jobs that are Available.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 2001.

Smallwood, Scott. “Doctor Dropout.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2004.

Vaill, Peter. (1996) Learning as a Way of Being: Strategies for Survival in a World of Permanent White Water. Jossey-Bass.