DB-FPX8640 is where the leadership specialization's research interest, seeded in earlier coursework, gets refined into a genuinely specific, defensible dissertation research topic.
Refining a research interest into a defensible topic
DB-FPX8640 requires students to move from a general leadership research interest toward a specific, well-scoped topic capable of anchoring an entire dissertation — grounded in a genuine gap in the leadership literature, not simply an interesting general area.
Peer seminar feedback and iterative topic refinement
The course uses a seminar, peer-feedback format, where students present emerging topic ideas for structured critique from peers and faculty, since topic refinement benefits significantly from outside perspective before a student commits substantial further effort to a specific direction.
Key topics in DB-FPX8640
- Narrowing a broad leadership research interest into a specific dissertation topic
- Grounding a topic in a genuine gap in the leadership literature
- Seminar-based peer feedback for topic refinement
- Iterating on a topic based on structured critique
- Assessing a topic's feasibility for dissertation-scale research
- Preparing a topic statement for formal proposal development
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Our doctoral business experts help refine genuine, well-scoped leadership dissertation topics.
Worked example: refining a leadership topic through seminar feedback
- Initial topic: "Authentic leadership and organizational outcomes" — too broad to anchor a dissertation
- Peer feedback: A peer notes this exact broad relationship has been extensively studied already
- Refinement: Narrowing to "authentic leadership's effect on employee psychological safety specifically during organizational crisis periods" — a more specific, less-studied angle
- Lesson: Seminar peer feedback is specifically valuable for catching an overly broad or already well-covered topic before significant further work is invested in it
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Frequently asked questions
A student deeply immersed in their own emerging research interest can lose the outside perspective needed to recognize when a topic is too broad, has already been extensively studied, or has a fundamental feasibility problem — peers and faculty who aren't as personally invested in the specific topic can more easily spot these issues and raise them constructively before the student invests substantial further time developing a topic that may need significant revision anyway. DB-FPX8640 uses a structured seminar peer-feedback format specifically because catching these issues at the topic-development stage, when refinement is still relatively inexpensive, is far more efficient than discovering the same problems much later during formal proposal review, after significant additional work has already gone into a topic that needed to be narrowed or redirected.
An overly broad topic typically covers ground so extensive that no single dissertation could adequately address it with genuine depth and rigor, or it may already be so well-covered by existing research that a student would struggle to identify a genuine, defensible original contribution. An appropriately scoped topic is narrow enough to be thoroughly investigated within a single dissertation's realistic timeframe and resources, while still being grounded in a genuine, identifiable gap in the existing literature significant enough to matter to the field. DB-FPX8640 teaches students to test their emerging topic against both criteria — is it narrow enough to actually complete well, and is it grounded in a real, defensible gap rather than an already well-answered question — using structured peer feedback specifically to pressure-test both dimensions before committing to a specific research direction for the remainder of the dissertation process.