Curriculum
June 6, 2023 2026-09-20 18:55Curriculum
DBA in Entrepreneurship Curriculum
The Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) with a concentration in Entrepreneurship is comprised of 60 graduate credit hours beyond a completed MBA. The program consists of nine foundation courses in business administration and research, four courses in the Entrepreneurship concentration, two elective courses, and a dissertation. Each course carries three credit hours, with the exception of the final dissertation writing course.
Students pass a qualifying exam at the end of the first year of study and a comprehensive exam before advancing to the dissertation phase. Coursework moves from the foundations of business administration, research methods and analytics into the entrepreneurship specialism — creative entrepreneurship, organizational change, entrepreneurial funding and social entrepreneurship — before the program culminates in an original doctoral dissertation that makes a contribution to business practice.
Anaheim University business students study fully online through the Akio Morita School of Business and Carland Entrepreneurship Institute.
Each pre-dissertation course is six weeks long and carries three credit hours, and a new term begins every six weeks. Students take a qualifying exam after their first four foundation courses and a comprehensive exam after completing coursework. The 60 credit hours above are the nine foundation courses, the four concentration courses, two electives and the dissertation studies.
Coursework and Dissertation
Nine foundation courses, four courses in the Entrepreneurship concentration, two electives drawn from the other concentrations, and a doctoral dissertation. Open any course to read its full description.
Foundation Courses
The nine foundation courses in business administration and research, each carrying three credit hours, taken by students in every DBA concentration. A qualifying exam follows the first four foundation courses.
The objective of this course is to inculcate in students an understanding of the value of intellectual property to an entrepreneurial venture and for students to learn how to create, protect, and preserve intellectual capital. Students will develop higher-level critical thinking skills, evidenced by analysis, evaluation, and synthesis.
International Marketing frequently requires major changes in how organizations conduct business in a global marketplace. It is a necessity for today’s business leader to be aware of the implications of marketing strategies and how they are employed in different countries with different cultures. This course focuses on identifying and meeting the needs of specific international target markets through close interaction with managers from other functional areas, such as promotion, finance, accounting and human resources.
In the increasingly complex global environment, developing and creating strategic choices is necessary for success and is critical for long-term profitability. This course covers the major topics in managing multicultural organizations such as comparative management issues, the formation and implementation of appropriate strategies, building strategic alliances, negotiations, cross-culture communications, international human resource management, and business ethics.
Supply Chain Management involves the flows of materials and information among all of the firms that contribute value to a product, from the source of raw materials to the end customer. The goal of this course will be to help students understand the strategic importance of good supply chain design, planning, and operations for every firm, to provide students with the use of key drivers on a conceptual and practical level to improve supply chain performance, and to give students a solid understanding of analytic methodologies for supply chain analysis necessary to achieve significant increase in performance.
This course focuses on students’ acquisition of basic knowledge of the philosophy of science, including the review and critique of concepts and theories. Students learn about the qualitative and quantitative bases for inquiry and examine the ethical, social, and political components of conducting research. Quantitative based concepts include experimental, survey, and existing action research. The qualitative-based concepts include case study, grounded theory, and ethnography. Course assignments emphasize the practical application of writing and critical-thinking skills and the integration of professional application at the doctoral level.
This course is the blending of four overlapping areas of study: Data Mining, Business Process Optimization, Applied Business Statistics, and Information Systems/Business Intelligence. It is designed to provide students with new insights into business performance as a result of using different methods of analysis. The ultimate outcome is to provide organizations with the tools necessary to make frequent, faster, smarter, and data-driven real-time decisions.
Innovation management is an important concept that can greatly impact global firms. Essentially, innovation allows a firm to achieve a higher level of productivity and performance, and it provides a competitive advantage in the turbulent global marketplace. This course describes innovation and highlights the importance of innovation for global firms.
In today’s business environment, change is a given. This course looks at systems thinking and how to view systems more holistically to determine what changes are needed. Adaptive leadership is about having a vision for what changes need to occur to adapt to a new system, including others and their experiences and input to promote change, showing empathy in the process, and taking calculated risks to find solutions where everyone benefits.
This course is designed to develop students’ critical thinking and competencies to navigate and successfully complete their doctoral programs and dissertations. Students engage in learning activities to become better readers of academic texts, to understand the process of academic writing, and to become proficient in various academic writing genres. Emphasis is placed on APA style guidelines and understanding the dissertation process, developing a scholar-practitioner perspective through reading, writing, and reflection.
Entrepreneurship Concentration
The four courses that define the Entrepreneurship concentration, taken after the foundation courses and assessed by the comprehensive exam.
Creative Entrepreneurship provides a comprehensive and practical analysis of creativity and innovation and their roles in entrepreneurship. The course explores creative problem solving; developing a creative mindset; thinking creatively; finding, developing and evaluating ideas; and building a creative climate within an organization. Finally, it looks at the entrepreneurial economy, the practice of innovation, entrepreneurial strategies, and the practice of entrepreneurship.
In this course, students gain an understanding of the development of organizational structure, strategies and processes through a comprehensive blending of organizational theory and concepts in the behavioral sciences and their application to organizational development and change.
Entrepreneurial Funding applies the theory and methods of finance and economics to the rapidly evolving field of entrepreneurial finance. The course explores how entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and outside investors rely on academic foundations as a framework to guide decision-making, focusing on value creation as the objective of each strategic and financial choice, and surveying approaches to venture valuation under risk and uncertainty.
Social Entrepreneurship examines how entrepreneurs creatively solve social problems. The course explores theories of social change and investigates how personality impacts the decision to become a social entrepreneur, then studies the process of creating a sustainable social enterprise and achieving maximum impact, and the distinctive characteristics of the social enterprise context.
Elective Courses
Students choose one course in each of two of the other three concentrations — Management, International Business or Sustainable Management. Elective offerings are subject to faculty availability and may vary by term, so students select from the electives available during their enrollment period.
In this course, students gain an understanding of the development of organizational structure, strategies and processes through a comprehensive blending of organizational theory and concepts in the behavioral sciences and their application to organizational development and change.
This course provides students with a conceptually sound understanding of the role of management science in the decision-making process within organizations. An applications approach to a quantitative approach to decisions is used, along with powerful examples to illustrate the applications.
This course prepares students to understand and apply ethical decision-making models within an organizational management model. These models introduce students to ethical skills, vocabulary, and other tools necessary to behave in an ethical manner, not only within organizations but in society at large.
This course provides a comprehensive coverage of the legal, cultural, political, economic and ethical issues faced by global business managers. An understanding of these issues is enhanced through the use of real-world examples, cutting-edge cases, managerial problems, and ethical issues.
This course is concerned with financial management in an international setting — how to optimally make corporate financial decisions on investment, financing operations, dividend policy and working capital management. Financial management is studied in an international context, as we live in a highly globalized and integrated world economy.
This course prepares students to understand and apply ethical decision-making models within an organizational management model. These models introduce students to ethical skills, vocabulary, and other tools necessary to behave in an ethical manner, not only within organizations but in society at large.
This course provides a comprehensive coverage of the legal, cultural, political, economic and ethical issues faced by global business managers. An understanding of these issues is enhanced through the use of real-world examples, cutting-edge cases, managerial problems, and ethical issues.
Successful managers in a world of global competition must have an array of skills, talents and abilities at their disposal. This course uses extensive examples to illustrate the vibrancy and challenge of international business, including the degree of geographical literacy necessary to succeed in international markets.
Industrial ecology plays an instrumental role in realigning industrial systems to be more ecologically and socially responsible. Central to it is life cycle assessment (LCA). This course gives participants a hands-on understanding of the frameworks, principles, tools and applications of LCA, addressing social and environmental impacts from cradle-to-grave; students create a manual for managing a sustainable lifecycle.
Sustainability and corporate citizenship increasingly shape how organizations are viewed and drive demand for project managers who can manage a project from a triple bottom line. Students learn to develop a project plan that meets the purpose of the project while factoring in its impacts on the environment and society, and create a manual for sustainable project management.
Accounting for sustainability links sustainability initiatives to company strategy, evaluates risks and opportunities, and provides measurement, accounting and performance management skills so sustainability is embedded in day-to-day operations. Students learn to manage sustainability accounting with methods and systems that analyze and report environmentally and socially induced financial impacts.
Companies are increasingly held responsible for the impacts of their products, processes and services on society and the environment — a responsibility known as Corporate Responsibility or Corporate Citizenship. Students learn how global companies interpret and manage these issues in balance with daily operations, publish sustainability reports, and implement management systems, creating a manual for managing global business sustainability.
Doctoral Dissertation Studies
The dissertation phase: a proposal writing course followed by the dissertation completion terms, in which students carry out an original piece of research and defend it before an oral committee.
This course deals with both the theoretical and practical aspects of the doctoral dissertation proposal. Its purpose is to assist students through the proposal writing process, including the problem statement, conceptual/theoretical framework, literature review, research design and methodology.
The final doctoral study demonstrates students’ scholarly ability to examine, critique, and synthesize knowledge, theory, and experience so new ideas can be tested and best practices verified. Students work through the doctoral study with their major professor and dissertation committee, making a fresh contribution to professional business practice. Dissertation students complete the CITI Social-Behavioral-Educational (SBE) Foundations certificate, and submit a portfolio documenting their conference attendance, presentations and publications.
Program Requirements
Key requirements students complete as they progress through the degree and to graduation.
At the end of each of the first four foundation courses, students take a Qualifying Exam on that course subject. The four scores are averaged for a final Qualifying Exam grade; the score does not count toward the course grade or GPA. Students must pass with a minimum average score of 80% in order to continue in the program.
After completing all coursework, and before continuing to the Dissertation Proposal Writing Course, students must pass a Comprehensive Exam based on their concentration courses and general business knowledge. A minimum score of 80% is required to advance to the dissertation phase.
Students must maintain a 3.0 grade point average (GPA) throughout the DBA in order to graduate. Any student whose GPA falls below 3.0 is placed on Academic Probation and given two terms to bring it back to a 3.0 level.
Dissertation students are required to complete the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Social-Behavioral-Educational (SBE) Foundations certificate, a web-based human research protection education program, before undertaking research involving human participants.
The DBA program can be completed in no fewer than three years and no more than five years from the date of matriculation. Extensions require written approval from the Program Director, the Office of the Registrar, and the Office of Financial Affairs.
