From The Dean
From Practice To Reflection
Rethinking Doctoral Study for Senior Professionals
For much of the modern university’s history, doctoral study has been framed primarily as a process of research training. Candidates are taught how to identify gaps in the literature, apply established methodologies, and produce original findings within tightly bounded academic conventions. This model has served early-career scholars well, particularly those pursuing academic appointments and conventional research trajectories. However, it sits uneasily with a growing population of senior professionals who arrive at doctoral study not as novices, but as experienced leaders carrying decades of managerial, organizational, and societal responsibility. For these individuals, the central question is not how to conduct research, but how to give scholarly form to what they already know.
The Limits of the Traditional Doctoral Model
Executives, senior managers, and senior professionals frequently encounter a misalignment when entering traditional doctoral programs. Their professional expertise is deep, situational, and ethically complex, yet the doctoral frameworks they encounter are often abstracted from lived practice and oriented toward methodological apprenticeship. In such settings, professional experience is frequently treated as illustrative or anecdotal, while theory is positioned as the primary source of legitimacy. This separation reflects an outdated understanding of knowledge production, one that no longer aligns with the realities of contemporary leadership, governance, and organizational life. At Monarch Switzerland, this tension is not viewed as a weakness of candidates, but as a limitation of inherited doctoral structures.
Reflection as Scholarly Method
Monarch’s doctoral philosophy begins from a different premise: that advanced professional knowledge, when subjected to disciplined reflection, constitutes a legitimate and valuable source of scholarly contribution. Reflection, in this context, is not autobiographical introspection. It is a structured intellectual process through which lived experience is examined, contextualized, and interpreted using scholarly frameworks. Managerial decisions, ethical dilemmas, and leadership judgments become objects of inquiry, capable of generating insight that extends beyond the individual case. This orientation is particularly visible in the Doctor of Management (D.M.), which is explicitly designed as a higher doctorate for senior professionals. Rather than emphasizing research training, the D.M. provides a scholarly pathway for accomplished leaders to consolidate decades of professional experience into a coherent, reflective doctoral manuscript.
From Research Training to Scholarly Maturity
For senior professionals, doctoral study should not replicate the formation process of early-career researchers. At advanced stages of professional life, the task is not to acquire methodological competence alone, but to synthesize experience, theory, and judgment into an integrated intellectual position. Monarch’s applied and higher doctoral programs, including the Doctor of Management and related professional doctorates, are structured around this principle of scholarly consolidation. Candidates are expected to demonstrate intellectual independence, ethical awareness, and conceptual clarity, rather than procedural conformity. This approach reflects a broader European academic tradition in which doctoral and post-doctoral study are understood as progressive stages of intellectual maturation, not uniform training exercises.
The Role of Reflective Integration
Within this framework, methodologies such as managerial storytelling play a central role, reflecting Monarch’s broader view that advanced professional knowledge must be subjected to disciplined reflection in order to become scholarly contribution. The doctoral programs at Monarch Switzerland are intentionally designed for working professionals, enabling the critical integration of lived practice and theory as a defining feature of advanced study.
This integrative orientation is evident across the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA), Doctor of Leadership (DOL), Doctor of Professional Studies (DPROF), and the Doctor of Management programs, which together form the core of Monarch Business School’s applied doctoral framework. Reflection functions not as a supplementary activity, but as a core intellectual mechanism through which professional experience is examined, interpreted, and meaningfully integrated with theory.
Narrative, in this context, is not employed as description, but as analytical structure. By examining critical incidents, turning points, and sustained leadership challenges, candidates render implicit knowledge explicit and subject it to critical evaluation. In the Doctor of Management, this reflective narrative forms the backbone of the doctoral manuscript. The objective is not personal exposition, but the articulation of transferable insight—insight capable of informing future leaders, scholars, and practitioners.
A More Honest Doctoral Landscape
Monarch’s position is intentionally selective. Its doctoral pathways are not designed for candidates seeking rapid credentialing or standardized research outputs. They are designed for professionals who have already led, built, governed, and transformed organizations, and who now seek to contribute back at the highest academic level. Doctoral study, in this sense, is not about becoming something new. It is about giving lasting scholarly form to what one has already become. By recognizing reflective practice as a legitimate site of knowledge production, Monarch Switzerland contributes to a more honest and more mature doctoral landscape: one that acknowledges the intellectual value of experience without abandoning scholarly rigor.
In this context, Monarch Switzerland’s doctoral programs are positioned as complementary pathways grounded in intellectual maturity, responsibility, and reflective integration. By aligning advanced professional experience with rigorous scholarly inquiry, Monarch affirms that doctoral contribution can take multiple legitimate forms, each shaped by the stage, context, and purpose of the scholar. This perspective not only broadens access to meaningful doctoral study for senior professionals, but also enriches the wider academic landscape through contributions grounded in lived reality and ethical practice.
From the Office of the Dean
Monarch Switzerland
