Doctor of Business Leadership

An Important Career Landmark

The Doctor of Business Leadership (DBL) is designed to prepare senior executives to more effectively assume overall leadership responsibility within a substantial multi-business unit organisation operating in intensely competitive national and global markets. The DBL involves a learning journey that has been identified by corporate leaders, their boards and past DBL participants as vital preparation to deal with an organisational environment that will be radically transformed in the next several years.

Many corporate leaders have gained their formal organisational positions as a consequence of their performance and meritorious achievements, complemented by general management education in courses such as the MBA, but frequently have not had opportunities to undertake higher-level leadership courses designed to prepare senior corporate executives to deal with the emerging corporate environment. The DBL equips candidates to accelerate their leadership development by assisting them to make explicit their implicit personal contingent leadership approach, drawing on their personal leadership journey.

The DBL provides personal challenges and capability enhancement opportunities for experienced executives who have demonstrated the ability to contribute to the success of their enterprises over at least a ten-year period and who have completed a Master Degree in a relevant business or leadership discipline. The DBL reflects the proposition “when theory is deduced through practice research, it is more likely to successfully guide future practice.” In essence, a good theory is good practice.

Mission and Goals

Advancing knowledge and understanding: We seek to advance knowledge and understanding through long-standing research collaborations with several universities and through the thematic analysis of the growing and unique repertoire of longitudinal leadership case studies developed by the DBL graduands we have been catering for on behalf of CSU.

Enabling individuals to learn throughout their lives (for personal growth and fulfilment, effective participation in the workforce and constructive contributions to society): We have contributed to the development, over the past 40 years, of several thousand middle and senior managers in many Australian businesses and government departments. More recently, we have implemented a series of 12-week, intensive on-job strategic leadership programmes for a major Australian bank. Our views regarding the importance of continuous learning within the framework of work/life balance considerations is outlined in the report of an investigation we conducted over the past three years sponsored by Working NSW into the future of work 2020. (ISBN 9780980499100) This report is available on our website.

Meeting the demands of the labour market through quality education: We have introduced a number of course delivery and content innovations designed to improve the quality of the development provided to course participants. We derive useful information from small group discussion sessions and individual in-depth interviews with past participants and Advisory Council members. We recognise and incorporate into our courses as much as possible the trend towards "course personalisation" We aim to more effectively bridge the gap between theory and practice and to provide a much stronger value underpinning to both.

Equipping the community with social, cultural and international knowledge, skills and attitudes to improve the quality of life for all citizens: We are a specialised mature institution. However, we recognise that we have the potential to achieve a greater impact than our size might suggest in equipping community leaders with social, cultural and international knowledge, skills and attitudes that assist them to do a better job of improving the quality of life for all citizens.

Contributing to a democratic, equitable and civilised society: The realities of leadership that participants tend to discover on their learning journey typically highlights the transition that is occurring in organisational leadership from an autocratic focus on generating short term profitability primarily to the advantage of a limited set of stakeholders towards a collaboratively distributed leadership that adopts a holistic multi-stakeholder equitable and inclusive service approach in regard to all stakeholders irrespective of their relative power and influence.

Contributing to an improved national economy through high levels of skills, knowledge and research (including collaborative research with business, industry and government): The organisation's initial raison d'être 40 years ago was to create a bridge between the business community and leading world-class academics. This bridge was established by five of Australia's best known major corporations. Our continuing intensive collaboration with business and our commitment to linking theory to practice over the past 40 years justifies our positioning as a bridge between the academic world and business leadership at senior levels. More recently, we have included the civil society sector as an important partner in cementing this bridge.

Overview and History

The International Marketing Institute of Australia Ltd (IMIA) was established in 1970 by five major Australian corporations: Amatil, APM, CSR, ICI and the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac). These corporations remained heavily involved until 1990 when IMIA became an independent postgraduate centre for strategic business studies. In 2010, IMIA became the Australian Graduate School of Leadership (AGSL) and, with its subsidiary, the IMIA Centre for Strategic Business Studies, continues to offer leadership development and strategic advisory services to organisations and individuals.

IMIA's faculty was initially contracted from the Harvard Business School and other major US and European business schools. In the late 1980s, a strong Australian faculty component was introduced. IMIA's first Faculty Director was a former Dean of Admissions at the Harvard Business School. Dr Ramzi Fayed was appointed Faculty Director in 1984 and in 1990 became the Institute Director. In 1991 the IMIA's Sydney CBD Campus was established.

In addition to short courses, business briefings and innovation facilitation and advisory services, IMIA develops and offers accredited postgraduate degree courses on behalf of and in conjunction with university partners. Course materials are provided online, allowing participants to study any time and anywhere they have internet access. This has enabled today's executives, with unpredictable travel commitments and workloads, to integrate their study commitments successfully into their lives.