Ph.D. in Business Administration

The digital age challenges managers with evolving and disruptive information technologies critical to business competitiveness. The Ph.D. track in Information Systems (IS) focuses on cutting-edge IS research that, at its most basic level, addresses the simple question: "How do we make businesses better through the use of information technology (IT)?" This question is examined at the individual, organizational and inter-organizational (platform and supply chain) levels through a variety of theoretical perspectives, using a rich repertoire of research methodologies. IS research at Clemson emphasizes the managerial, strategic and organizational aspects of information management and use. Information technology applications such as digital platforms, information system security, social networks, and business analytics are foci of inquiry, as are IT management approaches, such as software development, IT innovation management, information management capability development, IT investment, and digital platform management.

With the ubiquity of IT in business and society, the IS field's growth has been phenomenal. Consequently, the demand for IS Ph.D. graduates in academia and industry continues to be very strong. We train students to engage in cutting-edge empirical studies on IS and IT using advanced data analytics (e.g., machine learning, deep learning, and reinforcement learning) and econometrics approaches (e.g., panel data analytics, difference-in-difference, and instrumental variables). The IS Ph.D. track supports flexibility in designing a study program based on a student's particular research interests.

Faculty and doctoral students conduct research in the following areas:

• Digital Business Strategy
• Information System Security
• Digital Platforms and Ecosystems
• Health Information Systems
• Logistics Information Systems
• Social Media and Network Analytics
• Asset-Sharing Platforms
• Organizational Impacts of Information Technologies
• IS-Business Strategic Alignment and Governance
• IS Project Management
• IS Outsourcing
• IT-enabled Supply Chain Integration
• Building IT Organizational Capabilities
• IT-enabled Radical and Incremental Process Innovation
• Information Disclosure and Privacy Behavior
• Software Piracy
• Analytical Decision Support and Design
• Agile Development and Project Management

SC/OM students have the opportunity to conduct their dissertation research under the aegis of world-class faculty, who are highly regarded by peers as current and future thought leaders for their scholarly accomplishments, as well as their professional society and journal editorial leadership roles. The SC/OM faculty consistently publishes high-impact papers in premier journals that advance research, practice and policy, and many of the SC/OM doctoral students are recipients of best paper and other awards for their efforts.

Clemson SC/OM doctoral students undertake a rich and rigorous set of courses that build competence in both empirical and analytic research, which in turn, along with high-quality faculty mentoring, prepares them to tackle thorny, contemporary real-world problems in the Operations Value Chain (OVC) for their dissertation research and beyond in their academic careers. OVC covers services, manufacturing, upstream and downstream supply chain partners, and the associated research typically employs multidisciplinary lenses and theories (e.g., social, policy and health sciences, as well as mathematics, engineering and statistics). Moreover, it often crosses functional business interfaces (e.g., with marketing, finance, strategic management, information systems, etc.). Illustrative are the many cutting-edge topics where SC/OM faculty and doctoral students collaborate, including operations strategy; design for customer experience and well-being; incentives for workers and teams; omnichannel effectiveness in retail and financial services; building resilience to operational risks - from assessment of product quality failures to managing complexity in network design, to how to use foreign national supply chains to mitigate in-country political risks; new product, process and/or advanced technology development and value chain integration; impact of customer/supplier product reviews; hospital administrative operations and deployment of predictive, personal health care through artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics; the role of operations in sustainability and climate change; humanitarian operations; and the internet of things (IoT).

Increasingly, OVC performance seeks to go beyond financial performance, carrying over to customer satisfaction and experience, and further stretching towards policies pertaining to human, environmental and socio-economic well-being. More recently, our doctoral students are investigating transformational OVC issues emerging from COVID-19 (e.g., the shortcomings revealed in traditional 'efficient' supply chains, including the maldistribution and shortages of food, medicine and supplies, disinfectants, testing, etc., as well as other surfacing strategic, operational and business issues, including how to re-engineer and design new business and OVC models for resiliency. Our faculty and doctoral student research reach is global and spans many industrial and service sectors.

Our methodologies are extensive. We cover the gamut depending on the nature of the problem: On the empirical side, we employ rigorous qualitative grounded-theory field research to explore new and unstructured problems, measurement and survey research, design of experiments, and highly quantitative empirical approaches that employ some combinations of big data, data scraping, AI and econometrics to study operational problems. On the analytic side, we deploy research from our operations research toolkit. Oftentimes, SC/OM research embodies both empirical and analytic approaches. Yet, while our doctoral students gain technical competence, they aim to tackle OVC problems that can make a broader difference.