DB9801 asks a foundational question: can you take a genuine, unresolved business problem and build a rigorous, defensible case for how you'll study it — grounded in the literature, a clear theoretical lens, and a methodology that actually fits the question?
Developing a business problem statement
DB9801 requires identifying a genuine, significant business problem — grounded in either the student's professional experience or a documented gap in the management/business literature — and articulating it as a specific, researchable problem statement rather than a broad topic area. Students learn that a vague problem statement ("leadership matters in organizations") cannot anchor a rigorous applied doctoral study the way a specific one ("mid-level manager turnover in remote-first technology firms") can.
Literature synthesis and methodology justification
The course requires a synthesized literature review establishing the problem's significance and identifying the specific gap the proposed study will address, alongside a justified methodology section explaining why the chosen research design (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods) is the right fit for answering the specific business research question, not simply the method the student is most comfortable with.
Key topics in DB9801
- Identifying a genuine, significant, and researchable business problem
- Writing a specific, well-scoped problem statement
- Synthesizing the business/management literature to establish significance and identify a gap
- Justifying research design and methodology choices against the specific research question
- Structuring the formal DBA proposal for committee review
- Common proposal weaknesses: vague problem statements and unjustified methodology choices
Working on your DBA proposal's problem statement or literature synthesis?
Our doctoral business experts build DB9801-level proposals with genuine problem-scoping and methodology rigor.
Worked example: sharpening a vague problem statement
- Vague version: "This study examines employee engagement in organizations"
- Sharpened version: "This study examines the relationship between remote-work policy flexibility and employee engagement among knowledge workers in mid-sized U.S. technology firms"
- Why it works: The sharpened version specifies the population, the specific variables of interest, and the context — giving the eventual literature review, methodology, and findings a clear, bounded target
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DBA proposal problem statement and literature synthesis assignments.
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Frequently asked questions
A DBA is an applied, practice-oriented doctorate, and its research is expected to be genuinely relevant to real organizational challenges, not purely an abstract academic exercise disconnected from practice — grounding the problem statement in the student's professional experience ensures the eventual study addresses something with real applied significance, while grounding it in a documented literature gap ensures the study can also make a genuine scholarly contribution rather than simply confirming what's already well-established. DB9801 requires this dual grounding because a problem statement based purely on personal interest without literature support risks either duplicating well-established findings or pursuing a question the academic community wouldn't consider significant, while a problem statement based purely on an abstract literature gap without practical grounding risks producing research with limited real-world applicability — the strongest DBA problem statements sit at the intersection of both.
The methodology choice should follow directly from the nature of the research question: if the question asks about measurable relationships between variables, wants to test a specific hypothesis, or aims to generalize findings across a population (for example, "does remote-work flexibility predict engagement scores"), a quantitative approach fits. If the question asks about lived experience, organizational culture, or a process not yet well understood (for example, "how do managers experience leading fully remote teams"), a qualitative approach fits. A mixed-methods approach is appropriate when a single method can't fully answer the research question — for instance, using quantitative data to establish a pattern and qualitative interviews to explain why that pattern exists. DB9801 teaches that choosing a methodology based on personal comfort or familiarity, rather than genuine fit to the research question, is one of the most common and consequential errors in a DBA proposal, since a mismatched methodology will struggle to produce a study that can actually and rigorously answer its own research question.