PhD | Curriculum
The Paul Merage School of Business doctoral program coursework in Phase I will consist of both Area- and School-wide courses. The area faculty determine the area's course requirements.
Students have the opportunity to choose from an array of available courses offered through the Merage School, UC Irvine department schools or at other UC campuses as part of the Intercampus Exchange program.
Doctoral Courses
Each area within The Paul Merage School of Business offers 4-8 units of PhD-level courses annually which are deemed separate from the School-wide courses directly offered by the PhD program as a whole. Students are required to take at least 8 units in their area of specialization. Students from other areas with related interests are welcomed and encouraged to take these seminars. See the appendix for the course descriptions of these classes, which will generally be offered every other year.
- 291-AC1: Capital Markets Research in Accounting (4 units)
- 291-AC2: Theoretical & Empirical Research in Managerial Accounting (2 units)
- 291-AC3: Research Methods in Accounting (4 units)
- 291-AC4: Contemporary Accounting Topics including Managerial Theory (2 units)
- 291-AC5: Behavioral Accounting Research in Capital Markets (4 units)
- 291-AC6: Tax Research in Accounting (4 units)
- 291-AC7: Special Topics in Accounting (2 units)
- 291-AC8: Contemporary Accounting Topics (2 units)
Other courses that our students have taken to compliment their studies and expand their expertise:
- Math for Economists
- Microecon Theory I
- Microecon Theory II
- Microecon Theory III
- Acct Policy and Research
- Stats and Econometrics I plus lab
- Stats and Econometrics II plus lab
- Stats and Econometrics III plus lab
- Est Academic Career
- SAS and SPSS Boot Camp
- FSA and Valuatin I
- Taxes and Bus Strategy
- Applied Multivariate Stats
- Behavioral Finance
- Info, Psych and Social Process
- Writing for Publication
- Emp Methods Applied Mic
- Advanced Top Corp Finance
- Stats Methods I
- Probability and Stats
- Doc Research Methods
- 291-FN1: Advanced Topics in Corporate Finance (2 units)
- 291-FN2: Advanced Topics in Investments (4 units)
- 291-FN3: Behavioral Finance (4 units)
- 291-FN4: Finance Research Methodology (4 units)
- 291-FN5: Current Topics in Finance (2 units)
Other courses that our students have taken to compliment their studies and expand their expertise:
- Intro Finance Econ
- Writing for Publication
- Emp Methods Appd Mic
- Statistical NLP
- Macro and Finance
- Math for Economists
- Micro Econ Theory I
- Micro Econ Theory II
- Regression Analysis
- Exchngs Undr Uncertainty
- Time Series Analysis
- Invstment Undr Uncertainty
- Stats Methods I
- Stats Methods II
- Stats Methods III
- Int Prob and Stat Theory
- Seminar in Stats
- Machine Learning
- 291-IS1: Governance, Management & Impact (2 units)
- 291-IS2: Seminar on Digital Business (2 units)
- 291-IS3: Economic Theory in IS (2 units)
- 291-IS4: Pricing Strategies for Information Goods (2 units)
Other courses that our students have taken to compliment their studies and expand their expertise:
- Microecon Theory I
- Microecon Theory II
- Microecon Theory III
- Stats and Econometrics I plus lab
- Stats and Econometrics II plus lab
- Stats and Econometrics III plus lab
- Bayes Data Analysis
- Stats Methods I
- Stats Meth Data II
- Stats Comput Method
- PhD Seminar in Marketing Models
- Bayesian Statistics
- Analys Soc Net Data
- SAS Bootcamp
- PhD Seminar in Marketing
- Int Prob and Stat Theory
- Machine Learning
- Data Sci Using R
- Statistical NLP
- Prob Learning
- Adv Top in Corp Finance
- NRL Networks and Deep Learning
- Deep Generative Models
- 291-MK1: PhD Seminar in Marketing Models (2 units)
- 291-MK2: PhD Seminar in Marketing Management and Strategy (3 units)
- 291-MK3: PhD Seminar in Consumer Behavior (2 units)
- 291-MK4: PhD Seminar in Marketing Models of Perception, Preference and Choice (2 units)
- 291-MK5: PhD Seminar in Marketing and Culture (2 units)
- 291-MK6: PhD Seminar in Perception, Judgment and Choice (2 units)
- 291-MK7: PhD Seminar in Marketing Theory and Foundations (2 units)
- 291-MK8: PhD Seminar in Models of Consumer and Managerial Decisions (2 units)
- 291-MK9: PhD Seminar in Affect and Cognition (2 units)
Other courses that our students have taken to compliment their studies and expand their expertise:
- Microecon Theory I
- Microecon Theory II
- Microecon Theory III
- Stats and Econometrics I plus lab
- Stats and Econometrics II plus lab
- Stats and Econometrics III plus lab
- Industrial Org I
- Experimental Design
- Methods - Econometrics
- Regression Analysis
- Digital Business
- Emp Methods Applid Mic
- SAS Boot camp
- Adv Game Theory
- Microeconomics
- Qualitative Research
- Social of Culture
- Desn Aes & Social Life
- Doc Research Methods
- App Multivariate Stats
- Data Analysis
- Salivary Bio Sci
- Emotion and Reason & Memory
- Research Method Psych
- Philosophy of Science
- 291-OD1: Stochastic Models in Operations & Decisions (2 units)
- 291-OD2: Research Seminars in Supply Chain Management (2 units)
- 291-OD3: Optimization Modeling & Methodology, Part 1: Nonlinear Programming (2 units)
- 291-OD4: Optimization Modeling & Method., Part 2: Integer & Network Program (2 units)
- 291-OD5: Game Theory and Its Applications in Supply Chain Management (4 units)
- 291-OD6: Large Scale Optimization (2 units)
- 291-OD7: Network Models and Application (4 units)
- 291-OD8: Stochastic Programming (2 units)
- 291-OD9: Convex Math Programming: Optimization & Decomposition (4 units)
- 291-OD10: Nonlinear Optimization (2 units)
Other courses that our students have taken to compliment their studies and expand their expertise:
- Microecon Theory I
- Decision Theory
- Stochastic Programming
- Linear Optimization
- Game Theory for Mgmt
- Stats Methods I
- Fund Algorithms
- Sem Theory of A&DS
- Prob Learning
- Combinatorics
- Graph Algorithms
- Predictive Analytics
- Machine Learning
- Statistical NLP
- Approx Algorithms
- Data Sci Using R
- Perception, Judgment and Choice
- Mgmt Sci Analytics
- Applied Multivariate Stats
- Management Sci Analytics
- 291-OB1: Foundations of Organizational Behavior, Part 1 (2 units)
- 291-OB2: Foundations of Organizational Behavior, Part 2 (2 units)
- 291-OT1: Foundations of Organizational Theory (4 units)
- 291-OB3: Current Debates in Organizational Behavior (2 units)
Other courses that our students have taken to compliment their studies and expand their expertise:
- Doctoral Research Methods
- Writing Scholarly Pub
- Theories of Organization
- Data Analysis
- Ethnographies
- NAR Analysis and Pol Beh
- Qual Methods Overview
- Ethnogrph & Qual Methods
- Experimental Research Design
- Stats Meth Data I
- Decision Theory
- Est Academic Career
- PhD Seminar Strategy
- Struc EO Modeling
- Social Media
- Applied Multivariate Stats
- Strategy Process
- Sem Research and Writing
- Theory Power and Empowerment
- Interp/Qual Methods
- Adv Qual Methods
- Sociology of Gender
- 291-ST1: PhD Seminar in Strategy Content- Part 1 (2 units)
- 291-ST2: PhD Seminar in Strategy Content- Part 2 (2 units)
- 291-ST3: PhD Seminar in Strategy Process (2 units)
- 291-ST4: PhD Seminar in Topics in Strategy (2 units)
- 291-ST5: PhD Seminar in Topics in Strategic Mgmt- Part 2 (2 units)
Other courses that our students have taken to compliment their studies and expand their expertise:
- Writing Scholarly Pub
- Applied Multivariate Stats
- Theories of Organizations
- Behavioral Finance
- Doctoral Research Methods
- Industrial Org I
- Adv Regress Models
- Organizational Theory
- Info, Psych and Social Process
- Data Analysis
- Math for Economists
- Adv Qual Methods
- Found Org Behavior
- PhD Perc, Judgment and Choice
- Economic Sociology
- Networks and Orgs
- Analysis Survive Data
- Sem Research and Writing
- Discrete Math/Prob
- Intro to Soc Nets
- Grad Stats II
- Grad Stats III
School-Wide Courses
297A DOCTORAL PROSEMINAR for first year PhD students (2 units)
The purpose of this course is to prepare incoming PhD students for various aspects of academic life as they pertain to a university-based research/teaching career in areas relating to the broad fields of management and business. The course will provide opportunities for students to learn about trends in management education and scholarship and to examine the key components that can contribute to academic achievement and career success.
297B-SW UNIVERSITY TEACHING (Teaching Development) (0 units)
- to ensure that our PhD students are adequately prepared to assume academic teaching responsibilities upon completion of their programs;
- to ensure that Merage School students who teach courses here at UC Irvine are adequately prepared to do so effectively.
The course requires students to take a series of seminars designed to foster a well-rounded set of teaching skills and competencies by taking workshops or seminars offered through the campus on a wide variety of teaching-related topics. Students are required to attend at minimum, three (3) different seminars/workshops offered through the Center of Engaged Instruction (https://dtei.uci.edu/dtei-training-and-workshops/). Enrollment in Mgmt Ph.D. 297B-SW University Teaching is in the spring quarter of the student’s second year. Attendance at seminars/workshops offered by the campus throughout the first two years will be required.
To ensure that every student has spent some time teaching in the classroom prior to completing the doctoral degree, it is recommended the student teach an undergraduate level course under the supervision of a faculty member from the student’s area.
These courses are offered on a menu system (Research Methods Menu and Theoretical Breadth Menu).
All doctoral students are required to take a minimum of four breadth courses (for at least 16 units total). Breadth courses are defined as the following:
297D- SWT. Designing & Conducting Experiments
This course is designed to develop skills needed to design, conduct, and evaluate experiments and promote critical thinking about the use of experimental methods in business research as a scientific enterprise. It examines classic and emerging methodological issues at both theoretical and practical levels. This course assumes students have completed introductory courses in research methods and statistics and therefore do not need to be introduced to elementary concepts, such as independent variables, dependent variables, and ANOVA or regression.
297F-SWM. Doctoral Research Methods
UCI Catalog: An introduction to the fundamentals of social science research: theory development, research design, methods, data management, and writing for scholarly publications; for doctoral students intending scholarly research careers. Involves hands-on practice in formulating hypotheses, designing research, and conducting journal reviews.
297G-SWM. Qualitative Research
UCI Catalog: Course focuses on qualitative research techniques for management. A hands-on course that includes in-depth/long interviews, visual research methods, participant/non-participant observation, verbal protocols, constructing field notes, multi-media approaches for data gathering and analyses.
297H-SWM. Analysis of Experimental Data
This course is designed for PhD students at The Paul Merage School of Business or any other social science PhD program (e.g., psychology, education, economics, public health, medicine) who would benefit from practical, hands-on experience in analyzing data from an experiment or quasi-experiment and writing up the results in a suitable format for publishing in an academic journal. Students will create mockup datasets for experiments they hope to conduct in future, or they can bring in datasets from experiments that they have already collected. Marketing PhD students who plan to conduct experiments or extensively read the results of experiments should take this course in year 1 or 2 of their program.
297I-SWM. Applied Multivariate Statistics
UCI Catalog: Provides an overview of the most common techniques for multivariate analysis: principal component analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, MANOVA, regression with continuous variables, and regression with discrete variables.
297L-SWM. Writing for Scholarly Publication
This course introduces methods for planning and carrying out scholarly writing. What you publish will largely determine the course of your career. This course will help you (i) understand the publication process in your area, (ii) overcome standard problems in scholarly writing, and (iii) edit to make a more compelling and readable paper. The course will involve exercises, many of which will include rewriting your current work to make it clearer and more exciting. The course is suitable for students of any writing ability – we can all improve our writing.
297Q-SWT. Game-theoretic Models for Management Research
This course introduces some classic game-theoretic models used in research on management/business problems. In particular, it focuses on how to analytically model interactions between business competitors and/or partners to gain an understanding of their competitive and/or cooperative business strategies on, e.g., pricing, alliances, e-commerce, negotiations, and contracts, etc. Given the nature of these interactions between different business entities, both non-cooperative and cooperative game theoretic models will be discussed in this course. A combination of lectures on fundamental models and methodologies by the instructor and in-class presentations and discussions of carefully selected articles by students will be conducted throughout the course. The target audience would be those doctoral students who are interested in applications of game theory in various research areas, e.g., marketing, operations management, and information systems, etc.
297T-SWT. Decision Theory
UCI Catalog: Decision theories and preference models: How models are elicited or theories are experimentally tested, relevance to different management research areas, alternative theories, applications in management practice, and interpretations for the general public.
297U-SWT. Foundational Theories of Organizations
Covers major economic and sociological perspectives guiding the study of organizations (i.e., transaction cost economics, agency theory, institutional theories, organizational ecology, network and diffusion theories, behavioral theories, resource dependence), and examines how different theoretical perspectives are tested.
297W- SWT. Establishing your Academic Career
Addresses topics related to productivity and establishing your academic presence including; project management and goal setting, presenting oneself in written materials like a research statement and CV, giving great academic talks, and managing stress associated with doctoral studies.
297”X”- SWM. Business Economics
This course is designed for PhD students in business disciplines. It teaches mathematical and conceptual basics of microeconomics, and how to apply them in business settings. The course covers the basics of consumer behavior, firm behavior, and static and dynamic imperfect competition. Students will learn how to build simple mathematical models to gain economic insights into business practices and decisions. Depending on time availability, a sampling of specific topics includes product quality and differentiation, advertising, price discrimination, market entry, tacit collusion, innovation, vertically-related markets, network goods.
All doctoral students are required to take a minimum of four breadth courses (for at least 16 units total). Breadth courses are defined as the following:
- Courses on the School-wide menus (Research Methods Menu and Theoretical Breadth Menu)
- PhD-level courses offered by areas other than the student’s area of specialization
- PhD-level courses outside the Merage School as approved by the area faculty/advisor
297D- SWT. Designing & Conducting Experiments
This course is designed to develop skills needed to design, conduct, and evaluate experiments and promote critical thinking about the use of experimental methods in business research as a scientific enterprise. It examines classic and emerging methodological issues at both theoretical and practical levels. This course assumes students have completed introductory courses in research methods and statistics and therefore do not need to be introduced to elementary concepts, such as independent variables, dependent variables, and ANOVA or regression.
297F-SWM. Doctoral Research Methods
UCI Catalog: An introduction to the fundamentals of social science research: theory development, research design, methods, data management, and writing for scholarly publications; for doctoral students intending scholarly research careers. Involves hands-on practice in formulating hypotheses, designing research, and conducting journal reviews.
297G-SWM. Qualitative Research
UCI Catalog: Course focuses on qualitative research techniques for management. A hands-on course that includes in-depth/long interviews, visual research methods, participant/non-participant observation, verbal protocols, constructing field notes, multi-media approaches for data gathering and analyses.
297H-SWM. Analysis of Experimental Data
This course is designed for PhD students at The Paul Merage School of Business or any other social science PhD program (e.g., psychology, education, economics, public health, medicine) who would benefit from practical, hands-on experience in analyzing data from an experiment or quasi-experiment and writing up the results in a suitable format for publishing in an academic journal. Students will create mockup datasets for experiments they hope to conduct in future, or they can bring in datasets from experiments that they have already collected. Marketing PhD students who plan to conduct experiments or extensively read the results of experiments should take this course in year 1 or 2 of their program.
297I-SWM. Applied Multivariate Statistics
UCI Catalog: Provides an overview of the most common techniques for multivariate analysis: principal component analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, MANOVA, regression with continuous variables, and regression with discrete variables.
297L-SWM. Writing for Scholarly Publication
This course introduces methods for planning and carrying out scholarly writing. What you publish will largely determine the course of your career. This course will help you (i) understand the publication process in your area, (ii) overcome standard problems in scholarly writing, and (iii) edit to make a more compelling and readable paper. The course will involve exercises, many of which will include rewriting your current work to make it clearer and more exciting. The course is suitable for students of any writing ability – we can all improve our writing.
297Q-SWT. Game-theoretic Models for Management Research
This course introduces some classic game-theoretic models used in research on management/business problems. In particular, it focuses on how to analytically model interactions between business competitors and/or partners to gain an understanding of their competitive and/or cooperative business strategies on, e.g., pricing, alliances, e-commerce, negotiations, and contracts, etc. Given the nature of these interactions between different business entities, both non-cooperative and cooperative game theoretic models will be discussed in this course. A combination of lectures on fundamental models and methodologies by the instructor and in-class presentations and discussions of carefully selected articles by students will be conducted throughout the course. The target audience would be those doctoral students who are interested in applications of game theory in various research areas, e.g., marketing, operations management, and information systems, etc.
297T-SWT. Decision Theory
UCI Catalog: Decision theories and preference models: How models are elicited or theories are experimentally tested, relevance to different management research areas, alternative theories, applications in management practice, and interpretations for the general public.
297U-SWT. Foundational Theories of Organizations
Covers major economic and sociological perspectives guiding the study of organizations (i.e., transaction cost economics, agency theory, institutional theories, organizational ecology, network and diffusion theories, behavioral theories, resource dependence), and examines how different theoretical perspectives are tested.
297W- SWT. Establishing your Academic Career
Addresses topics related to productivity and establishing your academic presence including; project management and goal setting, presenting oneself in written materials like a research statement and CV, giving great academic talks, and managing stress associated with doctoral studies.
297”X”- SWM. Business Economics
This course is designed for PhD students in business disciplines. It teaches mathematical and conceptual basics of microeconomics, and how to apply them in business settings. The course covers the basics of consumer behavior, firm behavior, and static and dynamic imperfect competition. Students will learn how to build simple mathematical models to gain economic insights into business practices and decisions. Depending on time availability, a sampling of specific topics includes product quality and differentiation, advertising, price discrimination, market entry, tacit collusion, innovation, vertically-related markets, network goods.
