​PhD in Strategy and Entrepreneurship

At Olin, we believe that great strategy PhD candidates have a fundamental drive to impact business practice. Our students, like our faculty, have diverse undergraduate training, including economics, chemistry, engineering, and mathematics. We strongly promote interdisciplinary and collaborative research among doctoral students and faculty across business disciplines and with other areas and schools at Washington University.

In our program, strategy is studied at both the firm and individual levels – examining how organizations create and capture value, which arises from differing strategies, organizational designs, and environmental conditions. While firm performance is observed at the market level, the microfoundations of this performance lie in the behavior and organization of individuals and resources within the firm. The organization of these factors influences performance in innovation, firm structure, and human productivity.

Learn more about our Strategy & Entrepreneurship curriculum | Collaborative Research- Strategy & Entrepreneurship Faculty and Ph.D. Students

Strategy and Entrepreneurship Faculty and Research

The Strategy and Entrepreneurship faculty is dedicated to delivering a program that prepares PhD students for productive and meaningful academic careers. In addition to rigorous course work, you'll work closely with faculty from the very beginning of the program. This collaborative approach helps you to gain practical experience in the design and execution of research projects, and in the communication of research findings. Recent research projects have examined the impacts of CEOs with differing backgrounds on firm innovation; the effects of corporate wellness programs on firm productivity; how firms respond to innovation "shocks"; how firms operate in violent environments; and how firms profit from repeated exchange relationships.

Published Works

The Strategy area’s research-driven faculty closely observes firm performance at the market level, and the micro-foundations of this performance that lay in the behavior and organization of individuals and resources within the firm. The resulting research has been published in a wide range of leading journals, including:

• Academy of Management Journal
• Academy of Management Review
• Administrative Science Quarterly
• American Economic Review
• Management Science
• Organization Science
• Psychological Science
• Review of Economic Studies
• Review of Financial Studies
• Strategic Management Journal

Full-Time Strategy & Entrepreneurship Faculty Members

Nicholas Argyres | Seth Carnahan | Dedric Carter | Daniel Elfenbein | Tarek Ghani | Tricia Gorman | Sharon James | P. Konstantina Kiousis | Anne Marie Knott | Patrick Moreton | Jackson Nickerson | Lamar Pierce | Oren Reshef | Ulya Tsolmon | Doug Villhard | Hugh Wu | Minyuan Zhao