A Reflection on My Doctorate Study

Before My Doctorate Study

I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Science from the National University of Singapore in 1982. After looking for a job for about 3 to 4 months, I finally secured a manufacturing supervisory job in an integrated circuit manufacturing MNC.

While working, I did not stop learning. I attended in-house short courses such as Juran on Quality Improvement, Statistical Process Control and Facilitator for Quality Control Circle (QCC). In addition to these courses, I continued to pursue other external qualifications.

Firstly, I attained a graduate diploma in business administration from the Singapore Institute of Management in 1990. It was the first time that I experienced working and studying concurrently.

In the year 1992, when I was a department head of a Japanese MNC, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in business administration. My company had sponsored me for the course.

After the session had commenced, I remembered my wife and son always accompanied me to the NUS library every Saturday. We would spend at least half a day in the library. I would usually read books, and made photocopies from books. Sometimes, my wife also helped me with photocopying activities. In 1994, I successfully attained a master of business administration degree from the University of Hull.

Knowing that a master degree was quite common then and achieving a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) degree course was my aspiration, I had decided to enrol in the course one day.

However, I did not pursue the DBA degree because I was not financially stable. Also, I thought I would not be able to cope with the workload while working and studying simultaneously. I also understood that a doctoral candidate has to complete a thesis of about 50 to 70 thousand words.

Besides cost, time is another factor. A candidate should complete the course within 4 to 6 years. It is not an easy task, bearing in mind that I have to work and study at the same time. Therefore, I could not make up my mind to pursue a DBA degree. But deep in my heart, I wanted to attain a DBA qualification one day.

The idea of achieving a DBA degree initiated while I was working in SIMM. My departmental head suggested that all lecturers could collaborate to do a DBA degree. It surprised me as I wondered how and why so many people could work together to share a DBA degree. I did not agree with his idea since it was illogical, and I abandoned it.

Later, I noticed that MDIS offered a DBA degree course from the Southern Cross University (SCU), and there was a preview in Oct 2009. I attended the show and later enrolled in the programme. The DBA course started in November 2009, and I attended the quantitative and qualitative classes at MDIS. After I had passed these two modules, I commenced my preliminary research proposal stage in 2010.

Deciding on Area of Research

At the outset of 2010, I started my literature review. I was interested in understanding how electronic commerce could impact companies in Singapore through research. I wished to determine the factors affecting the success of e-commerce of business enterprises in Singapore.

The idea originated since electronic commerce could enhance organisational benefits. At that time, I was a lecturer for an electronic commerce module, and I realised that e-commerce could help Singaporean enterprises.

Then I was supposed to decide the description of the thesis title. Although the name of the title was chosen and confirmed initially, however, it was being changed later. Originally, it included the word, “consumers” as they play an essential role in influencing the success of electronic commerce. It is logical that we should not neglect them in the study.

However, after consideration, it was deemed that it was difficult to include “consumers” in the study. The reason is that the enterprises would be most likely reluctant to provide their consumers’ information. But it would be possible if I conduct my research through my company because, with this approach, I would be able to obtain information about my organisation’s consumers quickly. However, this is not my intention to conduct the research.

What I wanted to do in my research is to research a broader sector. Another concern is that e-commerce involves information system that is too large to focus. Besides considering the website in the study, the back-end system must also be considered.

If my research title is e-commerce, then the scope of the study would have to include the backend information system, which is too broad for me to investigate. After realising this concern, I decided to focus on website and enterprises only.

Challenges in Writing Thesis

The research journey was challenging. Lack of time was the biggest hurdle. Most of the research activities required time. The time was spent mostly on activities such as reading articles, synthesising, summarising, writing, editing, rewriting, designing a survey questionnaire, and data analysis.

First of all, a lot of time was spent searching for articles. It was quite challenging to locate the right materials. Fortunately, online journals from the national library had enhanced such activity greatly. In Singapore, it is quite easy to find recent articles in the electronic journals in the national library if you have permission to access them.

The only demoralised aspect, from my experience, is that after a considerable amount of time was spent in locating and reading an article, it was to realise that the material was not useful for the research. As a result, setbacks occurred. Sometimes, after a hard-day work, there was no stamina to continue searching, reading and extracting valuable information from articles. There was no progress at all sometimes.

After reading the extracts, the next stage is how to paraphrase the sentences and organise the ideas logically. My experience is that my progress was often interrupted by my company work. While working on my thesis, sometimes I could not focus on it well as I was always interrupted mentally. My thought diverted as a result of the distraction caused by work activities in my company, which affected my progress in writing the thesis.

My experience suggests that as a doctoral candidate, you should temporarily forget your organisation’s daily work activities while working on your thesis. You have to keep on writing and do not have to worry about whether what you write has made sense.

It means if any ideas that could enhance your thesis, you should jot them down immediately. You should ignore the grammars and sentence structure because you could amend them later.

My experience also recommends that the key to success is how to balance work and study. Also, as a doctoral candidate, you should not give up your hope easily. You must treat your supervisor’s comments positively. If you feel frustrated, my recommendation is that you have to put your thesis aside temporarily.

However, you should not relax too long before commencing your work again. Otherwise, you might lose focus and forget what you are supposed to proceed further. It is uneasy and challenging because you are not sure what will turn out to be in the future.

Despite that, you should continue to search for previous research findings to support your arguments and also determine the appropriateness of your approaches. But sometimes, your efforts might turn out to be futile due to minimal results were discovered, which frustrates you and undermines your morale in your study. My recommendation for you to stay on track is that you must keep on working on your thesis despite any temporary setbacks.

The other way to stay focused on your thesis writing is through self-motivation. I always motivate myself by reading inspirational articles. These articles prompted me to focus on my study.

We all know that “The last person to succeed is the last person who falls”. Also, the reward is equal to hard work, and there is no short cut to success. I always reminded myself that the process of achieving my goal is complicated, which I must overcome. I also understood that success does not mean that we have success all the time, but it means that as long as we have achieved eventually.

My understanding is that I will never accomplish anything if I do not start my draft and to stay focus throughout my study. My experience is that time is short because of work. After a hard day work, you would be tired both physically and mentally. You would be tempted to have a good rest at night as you might think you have another hard-day work the following day.

However, your progress will be dampened if you perceive this way and try to relax. My advice is you have to ignore your tiredness and continue to work on your thesis. The rationale is a bit a day will make a significant difference one day. You can write whatever you have in your mind. Don’t worry about whether the ideas are logical.

Also, you should not concern too much about the grammars used. Just write down any ideas you could think of every day will lead you to success one day. Later, you can reorganise your thoughts and continue adding new ideas. One day, you would be surprised to know that you have written such a vast number of words, which would delight you.

In regards to time, my advice is that if you are working on weekends, it will be insufficient for you to accelerate your job. At least, two to three hours daily is also quite essential to enhance the progress of your thesis. The reason is that on weekends, you might most likely be interrupted by activities such as household works, shopping, children’s school works, and others.

For example, your spouse might want you to help to drive him or her to market to buy food and your kids to tuition centres and others. Your spouse might grumble if you could not support him or her. A lot of negative feeling could rise as a result of these unpleasant and demanding activities.

Importance of Supervisor’s Support

My supervisor is an excellent superior. He would generally reply to me on the same day that I sent my pieces of writing to him for comments. Sometimes, if he could not make it in time, he would let me know when he would complete them. I consider myself very fortunate to have such a supervisor.

As a result of his guidance, my thesis could progress well and fast. Sometimes, I received his comments and felt guilty for not being able to express my ideas clearly. I always accepted his comments and amended my thesis accordingly because as a candidate, we should not argue too much with our supervisor but instead, take whatever comments and change.

I always believe that a supervisor is still much more knowledgeable than a candidate. However, sometimes if I did not agree with him, I would explain to him about my points of views. He would generally agree with my opinions if I were right.

Another good point about my supervisor is his encouragement provided to me. He always mentioned: “You are almost there” when I submitted my drafts, chapter by chapter, to him for comments. Whenever I saw the comments, I felt motivated and would love in putting more effort into writing.

I respected him for his motivation, dedication and guidance. Without his excellent supervision, I believe that I would not be able to succeed. In summary, choosing a supervisor who could support you well is an important decision one has to make. I think the ideal supervisor is his or her strength will complement your weaknesses.

Experience in Chapters Construction

In regards to thesis writing, my experience is that Chapter 2 (literature review) is the most difficult and takes the longest time to complete. Chapter 2 is the foundation of the thesis, which contains the research model and hypotheses. Hence, it is the most critical chapter that should be written first.

This view is also the advice from my supervisor. The section took about 30–40% of the thesis’s completion time. A lot of the time was spent in locating related articles, reading, extracting relevant phrases from articles, paraphrasing and rewriting. Eventually, there should be research issues which are worth investigating and resolving through research.

Chapter 3 is much easier to be written since there are a lot of books on research methodologies available for referencing. However, this chapter should not be written by just inserting all the theories into your thesis because all the examiners are very familiar with research methodologies.

The concepts should be used to support the rationale of why they are being adopted for your research. My experience is that I made the most amendments for this chapter according to the external examiners’ comments. They commented that too many theories were included in the thesis, which made the arguments appear rigid and tedious.

A thorough understanding of the theories is essential to writing a good chapter 3. A candidate should apply them to support his or her arguments instead of dumping everything into his or her thesis to demonstrate to the examiners that he or she is very knowledgeable about the research methodologies. The examiners, who are the expertise in research methodologies, will most likely become bored if such approach is used.

For Chapter 4, the data collection stage was also quite challenging. The response rate was low. I had sent out thousands of survey letters. I was quite worried when the survey duration became shorter, and the response rate was still low. Luckily, I was able to collect about 200 data for analysis.

During the data analysis process, I had paid full attention to analysing data. This job would not be done satisfactorily without paying full attention. The activities involved ensuring the data are valid, reliable and normalised. SPSS software was used for analysis.

I must be familiar with what analytical methodologies were appropriate for my research so as not to violate the assumptions of using such approaches. Hence, proving and confirming that you have not breached the assumptions before proceeding for analyses is a standard that must be carried out.

In Chapter 5, any inferences and conclusions should be based on the analysis results in Chapter 4. The findings that you can conclude from the analyses should be linked to Chapter two.

The significant contribution of the research should be summarised in this chapter. There must be substantial evidence why you think there are significant. What you have inferred from the research is essential academically and practically.

There are a few essential things in the following that a candidate should know to avoid making the mistakes which will be criticised by your supervisors and examiners.

First, don’t use the same word repeatedly. Sometimes, we like to use the same word again and again because it is easier for us to write. However, it will irritate the readers because they will most likely become bored after reading the same word repeatedly.

Also, the examiners might think that your English vocabulary is limited. Too many repeated words will increase the value of the similarity index number. Usually, the total similarity index number should not be more than 10%.

Second, don’t use the same word to begin a sentence thrice consecutively. For example, we must not start a sentence with “The” and use the same word to start for another two sentences consecutively. It is not wrong grammatically, but it is bored while reading.

In summary of my experience on the thesis writing, ensuring logical linkage between chapters is crucial to the successful completion of a thesis. The objectives you wish to achieve in doing this research must be made clear.

The expected contribution from the study should also be significant enough to warrant the investigation. Otherwise, your research might not be able to obtain an “A” or “B” grade during the external examinations. Remember that there are two external examiners to assess your report, and you should score at least a “B” for both assessments to pass.

Also, based on the external examiners’ comments, you have to provide your proposals to amend your reports and submit them to the higher research committee for approval. The duration for you to be conferred with the doctorate is uncertain, which is dependent on whether the head of higher research committee is satisfied with your proposals for the amendments.

It could be a very challenging process that you have to face and overcome. Therefore, you must stay focus on your research at all time. There should not be any interruption which could affect your progress.

Moreover, you should have confidence in your work and feel interested in writing your thesis. Each day, you should write a bit as good ideas will form after some time in the future. Later, you still can fine tune your ideas by rewriting your sentences to make them more concise.

Benefits of Attaining a DBA degree

What are the benefits a DBA candidate will gain after attaining a DBA degree? This question should be answered before one could think that it is worth to pursue. On the one hand, we all know that it is a great challenge to pursue a DBA study. On the other hand, the value of a doctoral degree is not easily foreseeable.

From my understanding, the degree is most useful in the academic field. If you are a lecturer, then the DBA degree will add value to your career as you will be able to teach postgraduate programmes, which will allow you to earn more.

For me, the benefits gained after completing the degree are such that I can write more fluently and think more logically, and I become more persevered.

Besides, once you are involved in the study, you will most likely want to find ways to complete it. Since you have self-esteem like everyone else, you do not want others to laugh at you, and so you do not want to give up easily.

Likewise, you want to release yourself as soon as possible by completing it fast because you are too tired of working on it, after a long learning journey. A great relief is realised after I know that I have passed the external examinations. I can say that the joyous moment is not easily obtainable elsewhere.

After attaining the DBA degree, I find myself become more optimistic than before. I become more confident and have a firm belief that success is always possible if one does not give up hope easily.

If one can keep on pushing himself or herself by writing, reading or editing a bit each day, the realisation of success will not be very far ahead. The critical point is that one has to set a plan and goal so that he or she could always finish a certain amount of task daily. Equally important is one should be self-disciplined and self-motivated. After completing the DBA study, I also find myself more inclined to doing research.

Furthermore, I have gained experience in analysing data with SPSS software and understood how to conduct validity and reliability tests, how to perform Pearson correlation test and multiple regression analysis.

Additionally, I begin to understand the meaning of normalisation and transformation. Still, I have learnt how to present my data in a concise and clear manner, and how to interpret and summarise the findings of analyses.

Challenges in pursuing a DBA degree

From my experience, two hurdles a DBA candidate might face. One problem is mental, and the other is physical. One will have more worries than before after indulging himself or herself in his or her research.

The concerns include how to write a minimum of 50 thousand words, how to express clearly with evidence, how to collect data, and what conclusions can be made and many others.

The most worry you have is you will lose your school fee if you stop your learning journey anytime due to whatever unforeseen circumstances such as work commitment, illness, or exceeding the permissible completion deadline.

My learning journey is long and tough. It took me a total of 5 years and three months to complete my study. I started the quantitative and qualitative methodology courses in September 2009. During the course, I needed to submit my assignments to the professor of the SCU online and also posted my articles to the discussion board (blackboard). I was required to comment on the articles posted by other DBA students and also receive others’ comments on my articles.

I felt that the assignments’ submission deadline was challenging because I still had to cope with my full-time job. I did not have much time to work on my assignments daily. However, I managed to attain a Distinction grade for my quantitative module and a Higher Distinction grade for my qualitative module.

In 2010, I started to do my preliminary literature review. Initially, I was stuck because I did not know how to determine my research title. I also did not know where to look for journal articles. My progress was slow.

The pressure on me was enormous as the time available for me to complete my preliminary research review was getting shorter and shorter, and I had to score a “credit” grade before I could proceed further to make my research proposal and apply for ethics approval.

Finally, I attained a grade of “credit” and proceeded to apply for ethics approval. Ethics approval is stringent, which requires a candidate to develop a survey questionnaire. There is an ethics application form required to be filled in, and then it must be submitted to the university’s research committee, for approval. It took me about one month to have my ethics application approved.

The other very stressful moment is the period during which I was waiting for the examination results to arrive. After I submitted my thesis for examination in June 2014, I felt a sense of relief temporarily as I did not have to work on it until the exam result came.

I prayed each day to hope that I passed the examination successfully. Every day, I also expected the results could come. Eventually, the results arrived in early September 2014.

After I got back the examination reports, my supervisor told me that I had achieved an “A” and a “B” grade. I was so happy as I knew that I had “conditionally” passed the examination and would be conferred a doctorate soon.

However, after reading the examiners’ comments, I started to feel a bit of worry and defensive because I was required to defend myself for the comments given and proposed for amendments.

I thought I had written very well and why such negative comments were received. When I knew that I had to fill out step 1 and two tables of proposed changes, I felt disappointed mentally as I knew that I had to continue to work on my thesis.

For the proposal for correction, there was a table provided for amendment in which I had to indicate “Agree”, “Defend” or “Clarify” for each comment and also reply with my proposal of changes.

The main problem in filling out the tables is that some of the examiners’ comments were not specific. As a result, I was not sure how to write my proposals. An example of this type of comment is “Your thesis lack motivation”. However, the specific portions of the thesis that had resulted in these comments were not indicated clearly by the examiner.

Luckily, with the advice of both my principal and co-supervisors and after going through my thesis a few times, I could then understand what, where and how to amend my thesis specifically.

I realised that the “general information” section of Chapter 1 was not structured well, and I decided to revamp it. The proposed amendment was approved by my supervisors and eventually accepted by the director of higher degree research training unit. From this experience, my advice to all the doctorate candidates can be summarised as follows:

Accept all comments — it is essential to accept all criticisms unconditionally. We must regard each comment as an opportunity for improvement, although some remarks require clarification.

All examiners’ comments should be considered as sincere because their views are neutral. If we do not want to accept the comments, we will not be able to improve the quality of our thesis.

Proposal for amendments — We should treat each comment seriously. There are many parts of our thesis that we could improve further such as using better words or phrases to express our ideas, reorganising our paragraphs to express more logically, improving our presentation graphically and so forth.

Endure and persevere in work — We should not lose our stamina as a result of a long journey of hardship. This view is especially true when we are almost reaching our finishing line.

As a lot of proposed changes are required to be determined, which must also be approved by our supervisor and also co-supervisor, it is too early for us to relax. Our momentum for the amendments of our thesis must continue until they are approved and accepted by the higher degree research committee of the university, and how long which will take is unknown.

Conclusion

A DBA candidate must have the ability and belief to identify the research objectives. He or she must know what findings could be determined and what objectives could be achieved through his or her research eventually.

The reason is that if the research objectives can be identified, the destination will most likely be quite clear, which will help provide the researcher direction and enable him or her to stay focus. How exactly the path of research will be is not as important as whether the destination could be reached. The rationale is if the researcher is not able to reach his or her destination no matter how much effort he or she will put in, it will be useless to proceed any further.

The DBA candidate must be mentally prepared to focus entirely on his or her work. He or she should set plans to guide his or her activities without fail. He or she should squeeze time out daily for his research activities such as reading journal articles, writing, rewriting, summarising, and so forth. The practice of waiting until weekends to work on the thesis should be refrained from because it will be too late to meet the completion deadline.