PhD in Strategic Management or Entrepreneurship

The Strategic Management & Entrepreneurship department at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, has re-opened this position and is seeking a highly motivated PhD Candidate looking to study a topic in the areas of strategic management or entrepreneurship. For this position, you will be able to freely choose your own research topic, within our department’s area of expertise. Potential research topics broadly cover how companies build and retain sustained competitive advantage in the face of current business- and societal challenges.

Overall, we are looking for a candidate who is eager to learn and conduct research on how organizations can adapt to current challenges, retain their competitive edge, and generate value for the societies in which they are embedded. We welcome applicants from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives. Strong applicants typically have backgrounds in social sciences or STEM and are looking to pursue an academic career. Creativity, self-direction, and a passion for scientific research are therefore essential qualities.

Corporate ownership and governance strategy, corporate strategy, CxOs, corporate-startup collaboration, digital transformation, entrepreneurship, high-growth firms, innovation strategy, scaling, strategic decision-making, strategic management, venture capital

Our PhD program seeks to train and guide the next generation of academics in the areas of strategic management and entrepreneurship, who address societally relevant questions with original research that meets the highest methodological standards. Through courses, research seminars, applied and theoretical research with faculty, and coaching from the supervisory team, our PhD students gain the requisite experience to do high-quality research independently. PhD students define and execute their own research projects. They do this with the support of their supervisory team, but also work with other faculty, including those at other departments and other universities. 

For this open PhD position, we are looking especially for future leading scholars to strengthen us in one of the following areas: 

Corporate Ownership and Governance Strategy: How can firms strategically adjust their ownership and governance over different stages of their development? How can firms secure: 1) the best fitting strategic leadership team, 2) the best (configuration of) owners, 3) the continued support of strategically critical stakeholders, and 4) their societal license to operate in todays highly volatile geo-political environment? To address these research questions, we are looking for PhD candidates interested in investigating the ownership and governance strategies of different types of firms, including new ventures, founder owned firms, family firms, at different stages of their life cycle, to advance our understanding of what effective corporate governance entails in the 21st century.

Scaling and High-Growth Firms: How do startups flourish, successfully scale, and make lasting impact, and what separates those that do? We are looking for PhD candidates who will explore the mindsets, leadership skills, organizational processes and technologies that enable ambitious startups (profit and non-profit alike) to grow, scale, and create lasting, meaningful impact over time.

Innovation in High-Tech and Knowledge-Intensive Industries: How do firms turn scientific breakthroughs into real-world impact? How do they make strategic decisions when technologies are complex, development timelines are long, and uncertainty is high? We invite PhD candidates to explore these questions in the context of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Using these sectors as an empirical setting, research may examine topics such as drug repurposing, commercialization and marketing strategies, open innovation, and strategic partnerships. The goal is to generate broader insights into how knowledge-intensive firms transform deep scientific expertise into successful innovations and compete at the frontier of science and technology.

There are many methods that you can use for theory development and/or theory testing, depending on the phenomenon you wish to study and the methodological skills you wish to develop. Our faculty forms a multidisciplinary team and has broad experience with multiple research methodologies.

For this position specifically, the Candidate should have an intended focus on empirical, quantitative research that uses primary and secondary data (e.g., large databases, experiments, unstructured textual data) and econometric methods. Prior knowledge in these methods is an advantage but not a requirement prior to entering the PhD program. The willingness to obtain method expertise is expected.

We welcome applications from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives. 

Candidates applying for this PhD position should have completed (or be close to completing) a master’s degree in business, economics, psychology, sociology, (business) information systems, applied mathematics/statistics, or (industrial) engineering (please note that degrees from adjacent areas will be evaluated case-by-case, considering how the candidate's expertise and research interests align with our areas of focus). 

In terms of methodological skills, candidates preferably already have experience or a strong interest in learning quantitative methods, i.e., applied econometrics.

Candidates should have a clear sense of the specific topic they want to study, and what method(s) they wish to apply. Your preferred topic, method(s) and supervisory team should be included in the cover letter. Students define and execute their own research projects with the support of their supervisory team. Creativity, self-direction, and a passion for scientific research are therefore essential qualities.

Required by ERIM

All application documents required by ERIM can be found here.

You will produce research that can be published in top-tier peer reviewed journals in strategy and management. These journals are listed on ERIM´s webpage: https://www.eur.nl/en/erim/erim/journal-list. Your work will also be published as a PhD dissertation.

To strengthen your international research network and complement your time at RSM, you will receive funding for a 3- to 6-month research visit at a top international university. We have strong connections with strategy and entrepreneurship academics globally. Past research visits typically lead PhD Candidates to North America, South America, Europe, or the Asia-Pacific Region. 

It is becoming increasingly clear that management scholarship needs to engage with questions that combine classical examinations of performance and productivity with timely studies of currently unfolding phenomena (e.g., sustainability transition, AI, globalization, migration). In your project, you will use management thinking to help address society’s grand challenges by questioning taken-for-granted assumptions and researching alternative and innovative organization structures and designs. Our business school is dedicated to making research useful for and valued by society and invests in training our students to do so in a responsible and ethical way.

Your research will advance our understanding of highly important aspects of the sustained competitive advantage of organizations, more specifically how firms stay competitive in times of unprecedented changes. 

Please refer to the web pages for more information about our current research interests, latest publications, and awards (https://pure.eur.nl/en/organisations/department-of-strategic-management-and-entrepreneurship-4/) 

ERIM offers fully-funded and salaried PhD positions, which means that accepted PhD candidates become employees (promovendi) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO).

Erasmus University Rotterdam aspires to be an equitable and inclusive community. We nurture an open culture, where everyone is supported to fulfil their full potential. We see inclusivity of talent as the basis of our successes, and the diversity of perspectives and people as a highly valued outcome. EUR provides equal opportunities to all employees and applicants regardless of gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, neurodiversity, functional impairment, citizenship, or any other aspect which makes them unique. We look forward to welcoming you to our community.

For questions regarding the PhD application and selection procedure, please check the Admissions or send us an e-mail via phdadmissions@erim.eur.nl.