Phd of Business and Management

After the PhD

The Ph.D program has the twofold objective of forming Ph.D graduates who develop a significant degree of familiarity in:

• contributing to the advancement of scientific knowledge in the economic and business disciplines, through scientific research and dialogue with the national and international academic community;
• developing an understanding of the corporate universe rooted in both literature and practice to support decision-making processes for corporate governance, autonomously and critically.

The Ph.D program offers opportunity for working in academia, in research institutes and in business contexts.

With particular reference to inclusion in the academia, and more generally in education, the university career represents one of the most frequent professional opportunities. The employment opportunities envisaged - in national and international universities - are those of Researchers, who often see as intermediate steps those of Research Fellow and Teaching Assistant. Recently, the new resources for research contracts on green issues and innovation issues issued by the Programma Operativo Nazionale (PON) Ricerca e Innovazione have allowed some Ph.D graduates to be hired, a few months from their Ph.D graduation, as Research Assistants (Ricercatore di Tipo A). Finally, a further job outlet in the field of education is the professional role of teacher in high schools.

With particular reference to inclusion in the world of research, the Ph.D program opens its doors not only to university contexts but also to research institutions and private and public associations that significantly rely on research activities. Given the highly qualified skills developed during the Ph.D program, it is indeed possible, at the end of the course, to carry out research activities in a disparate number of public/private research organizations and bodies, such as, for example, the European Central Bank at an international level, the Bank of Italy and the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT) at the national level, the Istituto di Ricerche Economiche e Sociali per il Piemonte (IRES) at the regional level and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Torino at the local level. With regard to employment opportunities abroad, the increasing participation by the Department in international research projects provides Ph.D students with the opportunity to deal with an international environment, opening the doors to work experiences in research institutions abroad as well as in European associations and/or consortia such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT).  

With reference to the business context, the Ph.D program provides the cognitive and operational tools to enter the labour market thanks to a wealth of knowledge and skills aimed at research and advanced consultancy in numerous areas (strategic planning, marketing, administration, finance, management control, research and development). Furthermore, in a highly digitized era and thanks to a multisectoral and interdisciplinary preparation, the Ph.D graduates will also be able to play key roles in the field of Industry 4.0 and Big data, in addition to the more traditional ones typical of the Ph.D program. 

The Department's growing commitment to third mission activities represents a further significant stimulus that allows Ph.D students to interface with company practice and develop specific soft skills, such as design thinking, work ethics and problem-solving. They can be useful both to stimulate innovation within established companies, and to lay the foundations for an entrepreneurial career. With regard to the last aspect, Ph.D students are constantly kept informed and invited to take part in workshops and summer schools of an entrepreneurial nature such as the initiatives developed by EIT Food, such as the Global Food Venture Program - designed to provide financial support, mentoring and coaching and networking opportunities with European Ph.D students willing to cultivate their entrepreneurial ideas in the food sector - and the Innovator Fellowship - similar program for Postdocs. In addition, university-industry collaborations not only provide the basis for synergies between theory and practice but also feed a network of relationships that pave the way for further opportunities.

During the Ph.D program, in fact, the Ph.D students are called to interact with local and national business actors. The Ph.D graduates will be facilitated in the achievement - in the medium to long term - of job positions linked to high-level occupational profiles, such as top management roles.