‘The next level of knowledge power’ from Manipal University

World acclaimed Manipal Global, through their fully owned subsidiary GlobalNxt University (GNU) of Malaysia, have signed with IIHE to offer a Doctoral program in Business Administration (DBA). The GNU Doctorate in Business Administration which is equivalent to a PhD, is designed for executives aspiring for corporate leadership and is structured to mould them so that they bring in new knowledge to their places of work.  

Statistics reveal the average age of an MBA holder to fall between 26 and 28 in the present context, proving the current and future leadership to be knowledge hungry at a young age. 

“The future of business is set to be in a world of vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.  Therefore, for a business to thrive, it needs to have in their management individuals who could think through what is known as a VUCA world. Therefore career progression will depend on one’s ability to think afresh and bring forth new knowledge and it is with this objective in mind IIHE thought it is timely to introduce the doctorate in Business Administration,” explained IIHE Executive Director/ CEO Bradley Emerson. 

Speaking on the signing of the agreement, GlobalNxt University, Malaysia Vice- Chancellor Prof (Dr) Abdul Jumaat Mahajar stated “I am pleased to welcome the first batch of students from Sri Lanka to our DBA program through the partnership agreement signed recently with Imperial Institute of Higher Education (IIHE) Colombo. We feel extremely confident that we will be able to add significant value to careers of working professionals here by upgrading their managerial and leadership skills through our globally renowned faculty, technology-enabled learning and best in class pedagogy.”  

Surveys in the country and abroad have highlighted that CEO’s are kept awake for their fear of not having the right people to take the company to the future. It is therefore a challenge in a digitally divided corporate world to find and retain the right people. The ability to think futuristically becomes a marketable knowledge power which can be derived through Doctoral studies in Business Administration.  

“As the world becomes flatter, the need to have working professionals with a global outlook will also increase manifold. Our DBA aims to provide just that and we have the expertise of running similar programs in five different countries. Be it our award-winning learning platform that’s more suited to fit in a working professional’s busy life or the cutting-edge learning content that takes into account latest management trends, we feel confident that we are bringing a pioneering program to Sri Lanka. This is the first of many such programs that we plan to offer in this country and we look forward to becoming a leading education brand in Sri Lanka,” stated Manipal ProLearn CEO A P Ramabhadran. Manipal Global Education Services Country Manager in Sri Lanka Vijayaraghavan opined that the group is optimistic about more such partnership with IIHE in several other programs, in the months to come. 

The Doctoral program in Business Administration (DBA) will be inaugurated on 2 March at the IIHE Colombo, with the participation of Dr. Wong and Prof (Dr) Mamata Bhandar who will be taking the first modules. 

Prior to joining GNU, Dr Wong was Teaching Fellow at the Department of Marketing and International Business, Lingnan University, Hong Kong.  Throughout her academic career, Dr Wong has published in several international refereed journals. She earned her PhD in Customer Relationship Management from Monash University, Victoria, Australia and her research interests include relationship marketing, services marketing, and consumer behaviour.

Prof. Dr Mamata Bhandar is based in Singapore and is a Professor at the GlobalNxt University, Malaysia. She has more than six years of experience in lecturing at the National University of Singapore.  Dr Bhandar obtained her PhD from the National University of Singapore in 2007 in the area of Knowledge Management. Her research interests are in knowledge management, IS/IT/Technology, e-learning, women’s leadership program, women and entrepreneurial thinking social capital and qualitative research.