PhD in Business Faculty

At Bentley, your research will probe some of the most compelling issues in business today, all under the umbrella theme of business, technology and society. You will be working with members of the Bentley faculty who are committed to disciplinary rigor in a trans-disciplinary environment focused on the individual student. Selecting faculty advisers at the very outset of your PhD studies establishes an early basis for a true partnership.

Your faculty team will comprise professors with national and international reputations in their respective fields — whether from business departments, or from the arts or sciences — experts who have distinguished themselves through teaching, research, and corporate leadership experience. For example, in exploring global outsourcing, you might employ sociological theory and research and consider different political and cultural contexts. Similarly, if your focus is comparing accountancy systems in different countries; you might include the study of a modern language. In these examples, your supervisory team might include faculty from both a business department and an arts and sciences department.

Faculty Specializations include:

Bentley PhD Advisers and Mentors include:

Computer Information Systems
Wendy Lucas

Information and Process Management
Mary J. Culnan
Robert D. Galliers
Jane Fedorowicz
M. Lynne Markus
Amy W. Ray

Management
Sue Newell
Anthony F. Buono
Linda F. Edelman
Scott F. Latham
Tatiana S. Manolova
Hans Thamhain
Cynthia Clark Williams

Marketing
Pierre Berthon 

Mathematical Sciences
Dominique Haughton

International Studies
Christine B. Williams

Sociology
Gary C. David

 

Pierre Berthon is the Clifford F. Youse Professor of Marketing at the McCallum Graduate School of Business, Bentley University. His research is eclectic and encompasses the themes of consumers and technology, electronic commerce, market information processing, organization and strategy, management decision-making, and marketing and ethics.

Mary J. Culnan is the Slade Professor of Management and Information Technology at Bentley University. She conducts research on the social, public policy and organizational impacts of information technology. Her current research addresses three areas: online communities, information privacy, and the impact of unsecured home PCs on critical infrastructure protection. 

Jane Fedorowicz is the Rae D. Anderson Professor of Accounting and Information Systems at Bentley University. Her primary research area encompasses the technical, organizational, regulatory and environmental factors that promote and impede successful interorganizational information sharing and collaboration. Her work examines interorganizational systems across several public and private sector domains, including supply chains, health care, and digital government.

Robert D. Galliers is provost and vice president for academic affairs, and visiting professor at the London School of Economics. He has personally supervised more than 20 PhD students. A former president of the Association for Information Systems and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, his research focuses in the main on information systems strategy and the management of change associated with the adoption and appropriation of IT-based systems within and between organizations.

Dominique Haughton is professor of mathematical sciences. Her research interests include data mining as applied to predictive modeling in database marketing, analysis of living standards survey data, notably from Vietnam, and data analysis in an international context as applied to the global digital divide. She is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Case Studies in Business, Industry and Government Statistics (www.bentley.edu/csbigs). Her current PhD students are working on data mining applied to financial problems, web mining and statistical analysis of airline transaction data in China.

Wendy Lucas is an associate professor of computer information systems. Her research interests are in the areas of interface usability, with a current focus on systematically addressing usability issues inherent to ERP systems, and information visualization.

M. Lynne Markus is the John W. Poduska Sr. Professor of Information Management at the McCallum Graduate School of Business, Bentley University and visiting professor at City University, Hong Kong and visiting research chair in the Management of Knowledge-Based Enterprises at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. She conducts practice-oriented research on the organizational and managerial issues associated with enterprise and inter-enterprise systems, knowledge management, and IT-enabled organization change.

Sue Newell is the Cammarata professor of management, Bentley University, and visiting professor of management at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on understanding the relationships between innovation, knowledge and organizational networking — primarily from an organizational theory perspective. Her research emphasizes a critical, practice-based understanding of the social aspects of innovation, change, knowledge management and inter-firm networked relations.

Amy W. Ray is a trustee professor in computer information systems
at Bentley University. Her two primary areas of research are information security and privacy risk assessment in distributed and mobile information sharing environments, and managerial change resulting from multi-organizational information integration efforts, especially in healthcare.

top of page

Additional PhD Advisers

Anthony F. Buono is professor of management and sociology and coordinator of the Bentley Alliance for Ethics and Social Responsibility. His research interests include institutionalization of business ethics and corporate social responsibility programs, interorganizational strategies (including mergers, acquisitions, partnerships and alliances), organizational change and management consulting.

Gary C. David is an associate professor of sociology. His research focuses on the role that interpersonal interactions play in the formation of intergroup relations, as well as ethnographic studies of the workplace. He has conducted research primarily in workplace settings where intercultural/intergroup interactions take place on a regular basis. Present projects include examining globally distributed collaborative software development teams, focusing on the role of information and communication technologies. Other workplace research includes examinations of enterprise system design and implementation, as well as the use of technology in developing social relationships.

Linda F. Edelman is an associate professor of strategic management. She conducts theory-driven research in the area of entrepreneurship. Specifically, she has examined the resources and strategies of entrepreneurial firms, nascent entrepreneurial cognition, social capital and networks in emerging organizations, and private equity funding of new ventures.

Scott F. Latham is an assistant professor of strategic management.  Before pursuing a doctorate, he worked in the software industry, where he experienced the .com highs and lows. At AMR Research, he worked as an e-commerce analyst, and was quoted in Business 2.0, Computerworld, and Information Week, and on MSNBC.  After AMR Research, he joined the senior management team of StreamServe, Inc, an enterprise software company, where he helped the company secure venture funding and manage strategic partnerships.  In 2001, he made the transition from industry to academia and recently graduated from UMass with a degree in strategy.  His dissertation was titled Examining Creative Destruction in the IT industry: it detailed how technology firms coped with 2001-2002 recession.  His current research focuses on the dynamics associated with organizational decline, such as the manner in which struggling companies pursue innovation as a means for achieving strategic renewal.  His work has been presented and published at wide range of professional and scholarly outlets.

Tatiana S. Manolova is an assistant professor of strategic management. Her research and teaching interests include strategic management (competitive strategies for new and small companies, in particular), international entrepreneurship, and management in transitional economies. Currently affiliated with the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, which investigates the new firm creation process; and with Diana International, a collaborative project which investigates the growth and financial strategies of women-led businesses worldwide. Recent articles were published in the Journal of Business Venturing and the Journal of Small Business Management.   

Hans Thamhain is a professor of management, Bentley University. His research is in the area of project management, technology and innovation management with focuses on the human side, especially team leadership.

Cynthia Clark Williams is an assistant professor of management specializing in areas relating to social issues in management. Her research interests focus on various topics including corporate disclosures, governance, social responsibility, management strategy and organizational ethics. Prior to joining Bentley, she was a member of the faculty at Boston University for 10 years following a career in the securities industry. She is a member of the Academy of Management, the International Association of Business & Society and the Society for Business Ethics. She is a reviewer for a variety of journals and has presented numerous papers at conferences both in the United States and in Europe. Recent published work has appeared in Business Ethics Quarterly and Business & Society.

 

Christine B. Williams is a professor of government in the International Studies Department. She currently serves as an associate editor and on the senior Editorial Board of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics and on the Meetup Politics and Governance Advisory Council. Her research area is political communication, with emphasis on new and emerging technologies. Current projects include two cross-disciplinary research collaborations, “Design Principles for Effective Interorganizational Public Safety Response Infrastructures,” and “The Challenge of Interagency Integration,” funded by the National Science Foundation, Digital Government Program and the IBM Center for the Business of Government, respectively.  

Search our faculty database for more information about other Bentley faculty and their research interests.

top of page