National University

What you'll study

The curriculum requires 60 total credit hours delivered as 20 courses (3.0 credits each). Students complete core topics that include business foundations across areas such as accounting, finance, law, ethics, marketing, information systems, research, leadership, strategic management, operations, human resources, organizational behavior, and economics. Core doctoral coursework and examples of course content listed by the university include:

• Transitioning from knowledge consumer to knowledge producer; examining modern trends in business theory and forming program completion goals.
• Foundational business and management knowledge across 15 topic areas to prepare for advanced study.
• Capacity building: theories and practices for developing people and systems to optimize organizational success.
• Theory and Practice of Organizational Leadership: applied and theoretical leadership models and their fit to practice.
• Organizational Ethics and Ethical Leadership: critical analysis of ethical principles, consequences of unethical leadership, and ethics in global organizations.
• Communication and Organizational Change: leadership communication strategies to support change initiatives.
• Coaching and Consulting: theories and application, adapting styles to organizational contexts.
• Cross-disciplinary Leadership: sector-specific leadership strategies and leadership's role in development, culture, and change.
• Scholarly Literature Review and Academic Writing: exhaustive peer-reviewed literature searches, critical synthesized reviews, and identification of dissertation inquiry areas.
• Quantitative methods: univariate inferential statistics, selection and interpretation of parametric and non-parametric tests.
• Advanced Quantitative Analysis: advanced statistical concepts and inferential analyses using common statistical software to support empirical organizational research.
• Three elective courses to tailor study.

Entry requirements

Admissions require an official conferred master’s degree from an accredited institution on file. The program notes a $0 application fee and states there are no essays or entrance exams required. The university may accept up to 12 semester credit hours in transfer for graduate coursework with grades of B or better; all accepted transfer credits must have official transcripts on file.

Career prospects

The program is presented as preparing leaders for positions across private and public sectors by enhancing knowledge and competencies for a variety of leadership roles. Completion of the PhD is intended to enable original scholarly contributions that can inform practice and theory; the university provides a separate resource listing potential career opportunities within the PhD-OL.

Scholarships & funding angle

The source page does not list specific scholarships. Prospective applicants should check the university’s financial aid office for institutional funding, investigate employer sponsorship or tuition benefits, and consider typical doctoral funding options such as research assistantships or external grants when planning financing.