Engagement
The Durham DBA at Fudan Grace Zhang
Dennis Sun
Grace Zhang is a current candidate with Durham and Fudan. She works for Shanghai Municipal Audit Bureau. “I hope to broaden my horizons, further improve my capabilities in enterprise management and develop a rigorous research and learning methodology through the DBA. It will help me to define the problems, to do the literature review and find the gaps in existing theories and ultimately to do the research to address issues.” Grace is only at the beginning of her DBA journey, and this year will start the sampling and formal survey to inform her research study ‘Implicit followership, leadership empowerment and employees’ innovative behaviour: evidence from China’. “The research will be significant as I look to fill gaps in implicit follower theory. It will enrich the field of implicit followership and also expand the research on the leadership trust and the forerunner variables of empowerment behaviour,” she explains. The research should be complete, written up and submitted by December this year. “The DBA programme is excellent for business people who wish to pursue further research and study after their master’s degree,” adds Grace. “It is like a window to explore the unknown world, through which we can understand what we do not know, through which we can study the achievements of our predecessors, and through which we can go into the fields we are interested in. DBA students can make contributions to both theoretical and practical areas.”
Durham and Fudan have delivered a partner DBA programme for over 10 years, and the programme has a growing alumni base. Dennis Sun, Founder and Managing Partner of Granview Capital, graduated last year and is currently living in Shanghai. “I have worked in the information technology industry for nearly 20 years, in countries such as the United States, Singapore, Japan, and Malaysia. In that time, I have witnessed the rapid development of computer and information technology and the growth of the internet industry. The digital economy has gradually become dominant, and the digital transformation of enterprises is also accelerating. However, most enterprises have failed in digital transformation. My research looked to find the key factors and successful models of digital transformation.” Dennis found the six years of the programme challenging, but it was ultimately an experience that he very much enjoyed. After in-depth analysis of Chinese information technology enterprises and collaboration with mentors, supervisors and classmates, Dennis found the answers he wanted. “In the process of digital transformation, as the research discovered, customer value co-creation is a very important factor which can affect the company’s performance. Furthermore, the enterprise’s digital maturity affects multiple dimensions of value co-creation and multiple factors of company performance.” Both the research findings and alumni network have been brought together in Dennis’ current enterprise. He explains: “In the last year of my DBA study, several alumni and I founded a venture capital fund involved in value creation. We focused on investment and service with early start-up technology companies. We used the knowledge and tools which I learned through the DBA to provide precise value-added services for enterprises.”
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Durham University Business School / IMPACT