MBA Online

The DBA Program

The Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy (ICS), Hitotsubashi University, began offering a doctoral degree program for business executives in October 2002. The Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program, which is conducted in English and designed to provide business executives with doctoral-level education, is available at the university’s campus in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo.

Hitotsubashi ICS offers a DBA degree rather than a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) degree, because a DBA program places more emphasis on business problem-solving and its practical implications, while a PhD degree is intended to provide the necessary theoretical and scientific foundation for an academic career.

The three-year DBA program accepts two categories of students. The first category includes individuals who are graduates of the MBA program at Hitotsubashi ICS. These students are required to spend three years of the program under the supervision of their faculty advisor as full-time students, devoting the second year mostly to doing research and developing their thesis proposals, and the third year to writing their theses.

The second category consists of business practitioners, who have received an MBA degree from other business schools, a Master’s degree other than an MBA, or those deemed qualified by the Admissions Committee for exceptional cases. These students will spend the three years of the program under the supervision of their faculty advisor as part-time students, devoting weekends and winter/spring/summer breaks to doing research and developing their thesis proposals, and writing their theses. DBA candidates in this category may work full-time, but they must maintain residency in Japan while they are enrolled in the DBA program. DBA students in this category may audit MBA courses in the ICS International Business Strategy Program, subject to approval by their advisor and the faculty member teaching the course.

Professor Christina Ahmadjian is Director of the DBA Program. Students may select any member of the ICS faculty as their thesis advisor, contingent on approval by the DBA Program Committee and the faculty member.

For detailed information on admission procedures to the DBA Program at Hitotsubashi ICS, including all submission deadlines, please download the Application Package by clicking the link below (PDF format):

ICS , Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy

[Term 4] Brand Management (S. Akutsu) (2009/Term 3&4 (Spring&Summer))

This is an advanced marketing elective course that focuses on the development and implementation of brand management. Managers in charge of a brand(s) face many challenges, such as (1) developing brand strategies that synthesize internal resources and competitive strategy, (2) clarifying brand philosophies, (3) generating and motivating brand identities, (4) understanding the brand images of key customers in depth, (5) communicating brand identities effectively with customers, (6) designing a comprehensive brand architecture, (7) developing and implementing brand building programs, (8) evaluating brand’s value conceptually and quantitatively, and (9) managing brands over time and across cultures.

The goal of this course is to provide students with concepts, theories, models, and methods that will help resolve these challenges. It is complementary to the database-marketing elective as it places more emphasis on concepts and theories, while the database-marketing course stresses empirical methods and quantitative data analysis.
Course Structure

In the first class, the course overview is provided. Fundamental questions concerning brand are discussed such as (1) what is brand, (2) why it is important, (3) to whom it is important, (4) when it is important, (5) where it is important, how to build it, and who should be in charge. Guidelines for the group project are also provided.

Thereafter, the course is structured in three modules. The first module introduces key concepts and models of brand management. In particular, it closely examines different conceptualizations of brand equity and brand identity. Insights and implications each conceptualization conveys, as well as other related concepts, are discussed. A variety of measurement models and scales of brand equity are also introduced.

The second module covers the basic models of brand strategy and branding, as well as their relationships with organizational capabilities and market opportunities. Organizational capabilities of brand building are identified and their roles are discussed. Akutsu and Ishida’s Context Branding Model is introduced as a frame of branding that has been developed and proven in the Japanese and other overseas markets.

The third module covers brand portfolio strategy and other advanced topics of brand strategy and branding. David A. Aaker’s Brand Portfolio Model is introduced and its relation to Context Branding Model is discussed. Other topics include branding nations and branding in Asia.
Teaching Method

While this course consists primarily of case discussions, lectures, videos, and guest speaker sessions are combined to effectively teach both theory and practice. Due to the nature of this advanced elective course, students are expected to enthusiastically prepare for and participate in the class. Students have an opportunity to present the outcome of their group project in a later session.

ICS , Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy

[Term 3 & 4] Entrepreneurial Management (M. Korver) (2009/Term 3&4 (Spring&Summer))

This course covers the process of identifying and assessing entrepreneurial opportunities, then conceptualizing and planning an enterprise tasked to capitalize on such an opportunity. Students will work in teams to pick an attractive entrepreneurial opportunity (viz., a new technology, new business area, or innovation in an existing market) and develop a business plan, working through issues of opportunity identification and analysis, management team-building and organization, competitive strategy, marketing and sales, and identifying and obtaining necessary resources. We will introduce frameworks necessary to identify and analyze entrepreneurial opportunities and the elements of companies that can quickly define and dominate an existing or new category of business through innovative strategies or disruptive technology.
Course Structure

The course is designed to provide students with the opportunity to gain practical knowledge in how to identify entrepreneurial opportunities and, with limited resources, transform them into successful enterprises. This knowledge will be gained by:
(1) Studying cases of both successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurial ventures
(2) Learning about and applying analytical frameworks to issues commonly faced by entrepreneurs
(3) Examining in detail what a business plan is designed to do, what it contains, how it is developed and written, what are its uses, how to analyze and evaluate the business plan, and what investors look for in a business plan
(4) Providing an environment where students can collaborate to create their own winning business plans as members of entrepreneurial management teams
(5) Interacting with business plan contest judges and hands-on faculty who have deep and recent experience starting and building companies
Teaching Method

The course consists of two sections. Term 3 (Spring) will primarily cover the items (1) through (3) in the previous paragraph and will culminate in a mid-term examination. Term 4 (Summer) will primarily cover items (4) and (5) and will culminate in a business plan competition. Accordingly, the first section consists of regularly scheduled sessions with a mixture of case studies, lectures, and class discussion. Term 4 (Summer) consists of out-of-class collaboration by the team members on development of a business plan with periodic feedback from the faculty. In addition, guest lectures may be scheduled from time-to-time. The details of the business plan competition will be announced during the first class.

ICS , Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy

[Term 3] Marketing Research & Analysis (S. Oue) (2009/Term 3&4 (Spring&Summer))

The perspective of this course will be that of a practitioner/manager who needs to extract important information for executives making decisions that commit resources to develop new products and/or manage a product portfolio. Emphasis is placed on the multivariate methods, such as factor analysis and structural equation models, which are heavily used in questionnaire survey and positioning analysis.

The goals of the class are as follows:
(1) To cover a variety of multivariate methods extensively used in marketing or management research and consultation.
(2) To provide students with an opportunity to analyze real datasets and give answers to real problems.

Since understanding theoretical development is essential to the proper use of quantitative tools, students are expected to understand the theoretical formulations and derivations as well as the skills of manipulating data.

Because of the nature of the subject, it is assumed that students understand undergraduate calculus and linear algebra, and can manipulate them. Also, familiarity with statistical concepts such as standard error, confidence interval, and hypothesis testing is a must.
Teaching Method

This course is primarily analysis-oriented. The basic course structure consists of lecture/case portions and analysis presentations related to the lecture topics. Class participation is strongly urged.
The software you will be using in this course are Microsoft Excel, and R and Natto (R and Natto are high performance free software). You are certainly free to use other packages for assignments but then you run the risk of not being able to do some problems.

ICS , Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy

[Term 3] Business Research (C. Ahmadjian) (2009/Term 3&4 (Spring&Summer))

This course is a how-to course in conducting and evaluating business research. Many of you will be required to do research in your post-MBA careers—in consulting, marketing, equity analysis, competitor analysis, etc. All of you are likely to be consumers of business research. Whatever you do after business school, you will probably be reading Nikkei Business, the Harvard Business Review, or The Economist. At the very least, you will be consumers of business research prepared by management consultants or securities analysts. Hence, the objective of this course is not only to prepare you to do research but also to prepare you to be wise, and critical, consumers of business research.

One special focus of this class will be on logical and critical thinking. If you think that you need more practice in becoming a more logical and critical thinker, this course will help you. One warning: This course may ruin your life! Students in previous years have said that after taking research methodology, they have trouble believing anything that they read, because we learn how to evaluate claims made by consultants, journalists, and politicians.
Course Structure

The course begins with several sessions on general issues in research design: inductive and deductive approaches, measurement, and sampling. We will then cover four main research methods: surveys, experiments, research using available data, and field or case study research. We will also consider research ethics.

In the course, we will evaluate research produced by consultants, business school professors, equity analysts, and journalists. My main focus, however, will be to give you a very firm grounding in the basic principles of research. We will examine issues such as how to choose a sample that is appropriate and will give accurate and generalizable results, how to design a survey that is not biased, and how to define a research question that makes the research process efficient and focused.

There will be two textbooks. The first is How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff. Of course, I am not teaching you how to lie with statistics, but this book points out some commonly used tricks, and teaches us some fundamentals of research methodology. You should buy this if possible - it is a short paperback. The other text is Approaches to Social Research by Royce A. Singleton, Jr. and Bruce C. Straits. This book is hard core, and is used in many PhD courses in research methodology. I have assigned two chapters from this book. You don’t need to buy it - it will be on reserve in the library.

Research is much easier to read and criticize than to do. Therefore, there will be three written assignments in which you have an opportunity to do research and provide constructive criticism of others’ work. First is a short, half-page paper listing three research questions. This will be very easy. The second is a longer paper (8-10 pages), in which you will be asked to come up with a research question, and two different research designs to answer that question (you may choose between survey, experiment, available data, and field/case study). You don’t have to do the research, just come up with the design. This will be more difficult than you expect, but you will be glad that you did it. The third assignment will be to critique an (anonymous) classmate’s research design. This will be 3-5 pages. The biggest challenge will be to be helpful and constructive. There will be no final exam. All the assignments are to be done individually.
Teaching Method

The class format will be lectures and discussions.