Examine your practice
Critically assess the assumptions, theories and evidence that inform coaching relationships and interventions.
Monarch Business School · Applied doctoral study
Doctor of Coaching
Turn coaching experience into inquiry.
Make an original contribution to practice.
Explore how coaching works, for whom and under what conditions. Build on your professional experience through rigorous applied research into coaching relationships, processes, ethics and outcomes.
24 or 48 monthsMinimum standard or extended pathway
Online & part-timeStudy alongside professional practice
Applied researchCoaching practice as your field of inquiry
Faculty guidanceSupervised thesis and oral defence
Program Facts
The Doctor of Coaching (DCoach) at Monarch Business School is for experienced executive, leadership, team and professional coaches who want to take their practice further. Starting with a question from your own experience, you develop a focused doctoral project with faculty guidance. Explore what makes coaching effective, how clients turn insight into lasting change, or how your approach could better meet the needs of the people you support.
Online, study allows you to remain active professionally while deepening your expertise and strengthening your coaching or consulting offering. The programme gives you the opportunity to build a distinctive area of professional expertise and develop insights you can put to work with clients, share through writing and speaking, or bring into coach education and programme leadership.
- Institution
- Monarch Switzerland
- Department
- Monarch Business School
- Award
- Doctor of Coaching (DCoach)
- Study Mode
- Fully online
- Standard Pathway
- Minimum 24 months
- Extended Pathway
- Minimum 48 months
- Study Format
- Part-time, supervised research
- Designed For
- Experienced coaches and coaching practitioners
- Language
- English
- Assessment
- Original doctoral thesis and oral defence
Study is designed to be completed online without relocation, including the doctoral defence. Minimum duration establishes the earliest graduation eligibility; completion requires fulfilment of all academic requirements.
Building on your experience
Your next step as an experienced coach.
For many experienced coaches, there comes a point when the next step is less about another coaching certification and more about what they can contribute from years of practice. The DCoach offers a way to build on that experience, develop a recognised area of expertise and earn a doctoral qualification through work that matters to them. It can strengthen their professional standing and give them a substantive foundation for new conversations with clients, organisations and peers.
Experience meets inquiry
Bring a researcher’s perspective
to the work of coaching.
Coaching practice raises questions that experience alone cannot settle. How do coaching relationships support change? What shapes the usefulness of an intervention? How can practitioners evaluate outcomes and make responsible decisions in complex settings?
The DCoach provides a framework for investigating a focused question through coaching scholarship, appropriate research methods and supervised original inquiry. Your contribution connects scholarly understanding with the realities of professional practice.
Investigate with rigour
Design and conduct ethical empirical research, using methods appropriate to your question and professional context.
Contribute to coaching
Translate findings into defensible insights, frameworks or recommendations that can inform professional practice.
Your doctoral journey
From a question in practice
to an original contribution.
The proposed DCoach pathway follows Monarch’s established thesis-based model: research preparation, an approved proposal, supervised investigation, a doctoral manuscript and oral defence. Progress depends on academic review and completion of the relevant milestones.
- 01 · PREPARE
Build the foundations
Engage with coaching scholarship, research methods, critical reflection and academic writing.
- 02 · FRAME
Shape your question
Develop a focused proposal, conceptual framework and research design, addressing ethics and access to participants.
- 03 · INVESTIGATE
Study coaching in context
Conduct approved empirical inquiry, gathering and analysing evidence with appropriate safeguards.
- 04 · SYNTHESISE
Develop your thesis
Connect findings with scholarship, explain limitations and articulate an original contribution to practice.
- 05 · DEFEND
Present your contribution
Defend your research and its implications through oral examination and complete any required revisions.
Who this programme is for
For practitioners ready to investigate
the questions behind their work.
Bring substantial coaching experience, a question worth examining and the willingness to challenge your own assumptions. The DCoach is designed for practitioners seeking to deepen their contribution through research.
Examine how change happens
Experienced executive and leadership coaches exploring relationships, reflective processes and client development.
Understand coaching in context
Practitioners investigating team coaching, organisational conditions and the interaction between individual and collective development.
Develop the profession
Experienced practitioners examining supervision, ethical judgement, reflective learning and the development of coaching practice.
Your field of inquiry
Coaching practice.
Questions with consequence.
Your research may examine coaching processes, conditions, effects, ethics, supervision or improvement. Settings may include executive, leadership, team, organisational, intercultural and AI-mediated coaching.
These are possible contexts for inquiry rather than fixed specialisations. A viable project needs a focused question, a suitable methodological approach, ethical access to evidence and appropriate supervision.
Relationships & processes
How do trust, dialogue and reflective practice shape the coaching experience?
Evidence & outcomes
How can coaching outcomes be understood and evaluated within particular professional settings?
Ethics & emerging practice
What responsibilities arise around power, confidentiality, cultural context and the use of AI in coaching?
Study while you work
Serious inquiry.
Professional flexibility.
Research connected to practice
Develop your inquiry alongside professional responsibilities through online study and individual faculty guidance. Your practice can provide a starting point for research, subject to ethical approval, consent and appropriate boundaries.
A distinct doctoral focus
The DCoach studies coaching as a practice or developmental intervention. Where leaders are coaching clients, the research focus remains coaching. The Doctor of Leadership instead centres its inquiry on leadership practice.
Admissions and support
Begin with your experience
and a research question.
Discuss your academic background, coaching experience and research interests with Admissions. Programme-specific entry requirements and the first available intake will be confirmed as part of the launch.
Discuss your eligibility →What preparation is relevant?
The programme is intended for experienced coaching practitioners with the academic preparation and research readiness needed for doctoral study. Assessment will consider professional experience, the proposed area of inquiry and supervisory fit. Final DCoach admissions criteria remain subject to academic approval.
Do I need a completed proposal to enquire?
An initial enquiry can outline the coaching question you would like to investigate and why it matters. The formal proposal is developed through the research preparation and proposal stages while in the program in conjunction with the faculty.
How does the DCoach differ from a PhD?
The DCoach emphasises an original contribution to professional coaching practice. A PhD places its primary emphasis on an original theoretical contribution to knowledge. Both require rigorous doctoral inquiry; the intended contribution differs.
Is completion guaranteed in 24 months?
No. The standard pathway has a minimum registration period of 24 months; the extended pathway has a minimum of 48 months. Graduation also requires successful completion of the research, thesis, defence and all other academic requirements.
Planning your study
Plan your doctoral journey.
For tuition and payment information, please visit Monarch’s tuition page.
Your practice. Your next contribution.
What coaching question
will you take further?
Talk with Monarch’s Admissions Office about your professional background, research interests and the proposed Doctor of Coaching pathway.