CONTANGO College and Clermont School of Business jointly launch a three-year DBA program. The collaboration leverages resource integration and mutual recognition to provide empirically oriented research training and leadership development for senior executives and scholars. The two institutions will jointly design a curriculum covering strategic management, innovation and entrepreneurship, data-driven decision-making, and global governance, aligned with industry needs and global trends. The model includes joint enrollment, dual-degree options, jointly supervised doctoral research, and cross-campus seminars with practical case teaching to enhance both theoretical depth and applied impact.
A Joint Research Center will unite industry consultants and academic mentors from diverse sectors to advance case development, fieldwork, and industry collaboration. Degree conferral will follow the joint academic review standards of both schools, ensuring certification consistency, with international learning experiences such as cross-campus study weeks, global conferences, and short-term overseas research opportunities. The ultimate goal is to cultivate DBA experts with global vision, forward-looking research capabilities, and strong governance credentials, contributing to sustainable governance and innovation ecosystems.
Since its creation in 1919, Clermont School of Business has been recognized for the quality of its training, its diplomas and its support in order to train its students, as well as managers and business executives, to the highest level of competence. Our raison d’être as a Grande Ecole of Management is constant and unambiguous: to deliver high-level training and to offer each student individual and close support that responds to the quest for meaning that drives us all, both on a personal and professional level. Its great ambition is to be the school that reveals the talents and passions of a new generation of change agents, placing people and the planet at the heart of its choices.
With a solid ecosystem and an international, national and regional influence, our School intends to use its strength to promote the emergence of a more just and sustainable world. By relying on its network of partners, companies and foreign universities, but also on its graduates – posted in the four corners of the world -, it trains responsible leaders, committed explorers and inspiring entrepreneurs ready to take up the challenges of business in tomorrow’s global economy and to shape the world of tomorrow.
Our international DNA (first double degree agreement in the US in 1949), our consistent actions in favor of social openness and equal opportunities, the involvement of companies in our specialization programs, and our involvement in the Clermont-Ferrand university site are also hallmarks of Clermont School of Business, rich in strong values and a spirit of mutual aid, sharing and cooperation.
Clermont School of Business is a Management School committed to its territory and connected internationally. With its network of alumni and partners, it aims to accompany the changes in the world today.
Bac+5 Français/English 3years Online
Clermont School of Business, an AACSB-accredited school, offers a Doctorate of Business Administration programme, a generalist DBA that covers the range of high-level management activities in organisations. It is designed around three ambitions.
An academic ambition, first of all, since the School and its partners aim to bring DBA participants, professionals and students alike, into the world of management science research in an international context.
A scientific ambition, then, since with this program, it is a question of bringing together major theories in management sciences and business practices, and to enable, through support, monitoring and an appropriate research framework, the conduct of research that directly concerns the professional activity of participants and the issues of their organization.
Finally, a shared ambition of educational commitment: that of university partners who position themselves on the international scene and of populations who wish to have access to very high-level training courses that are recognized throughout the world.
This program is therefore intended to be an optimistic bet on a richer and more fruitful future for management sciences and all its new actors. This is particularly based on one of the major specificities of the DBA at Clermont School of Business: a thought-out and mastered articulation between the imperative of rigor and the need for relevance for management research. We invite you to discover this promise in detail here.
-Acquire advanced theoretical skills in management sciences
- Developing methodological research skills
Conducting rigorous and relevant research interesting and useful for managers and companies, become a specialist in applied and reflective
- research engaged toward practitioners
- Develop an intellectually rigorous approach to management while sharpening critical thinking and inviting you to explore all possibilities
- Produce and disseminate research on management innovation for efficient and responsible organizations
- Valuing one’s DBA thesis in the form of publications in academic journals.
The program is part-time (seminars are on weekends), over three years with the possibility of an additional year if necessary, and it is delivered fully online. The language is English for all teaching modules; however, the thesis supervisor support, the writing of the thesis and the defense can be done either in French or in English at the doctoral student’s choice.
First, a supervision by a qualified supervisor, professor from the Faculty of Clermont School of Business, available and attentive. He is specialized in the doctoral student’s field of application and is dedicated to him from the start of the doctoral journey.
Then, applicants are accompanied and supported throughout the process until the defense by a series of collective workshops. These workshops are dedicated to the main steps of the construction of the thesis (problem statement, theoretical framework, collection and processing of data, etc.) as well as to academic writing (writing the thesis and articles) and to the preparation for the oral defense. To note, certain optional workshops are offered in years 1 and 2 in order to deepen data processing and academic writing practices, and to discover the practice of action and collaborative research, which particularly suits to researchers involved in the world. organizations.
In parallel, a set of seminars, mainly in Years 1 and 2, allow students to learn the practice and methods of research and to understand the major current issues of research in the main disciplines of Management Sciences. Finally, Year 3 is more intensively dedicated to personal thesis work with fewer seminars and more workshops preparing the work of presentation and academic writing as well as the thesis defense.
Clermont School of Business DBA is a generalist DBA which covers the range of high-level management activities in organizations. Here, as examples taken from the theses defended, is a list – of course non-exhaustive – of the many possible research themes for doctoral students depending on their orientation.
- Management of Health care Institutions
- Digital Economy
- Innovation Management
- Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics
- Human Resources and Talent Management
- Strategy and Strategic Planning
- Marketing and Branding
- Finance and Financial Modeling
- Oil, Gas, and Petrochemical Industries
- Banking and Financial Services
Public concerned
- Candidates holding a Master’s degree (Bac+5) with a good command of English who need a doctoral degree to turn towards teaching and research, to build up a file of publications and to join a Business School.
- Experienced professionals who need a doctoral degree to move into high level management positions, to retrain in teaching and research, and to develop academic expertise in order to set up a consulting business.
Recruitment in a two-stage process
- Examination of the applicant file (diplomas, CV, cover letter, letter of recommendation, professional certificates)
- Motivation Interview
