Nick’s rules for a good PhD education

We are together in South Bend and teach a class to PhD students in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. Our joint teaching experience makes us wonder: What should all doctoral students learn or what should we all teach the next generation of IS students? We come up with Nick’s rules for a good PhD education: First, understand what knowledge and inferences are. Second, learn different methods and then deep dive into a primary method. Third, pick a domain and learn its foundations and history. Fourth, develop a mindset of mastery to become the world’s expert on your topic. And finally, develop and hone your writing skills.

Episode reading list

Bacon, F. (1620/2019). Novum Organum. Anodos.

Hume, D. (1748/1998). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In J. Perry & M. E. Bratman (Eds.), Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings (3rd ed., pp. 190-220). Oxford University Press.

Popper, K. R. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Basic Books.

Yin, R. K. (2009). Case Study Research: Design and Methods (4th ed.). Sage Publications.

Berente, N., Ivanov, D., & Vandenbosch, B. (2007). Process Compliance and Enterprise Systems Implementation. In: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Waikoloa, Hawaii, pp. 222-231.

Castelo, N., Bos, M. W., & Lehmann, D. R. (2019). Task-Dependent Algorithmic Aversion. Journal of Marketing Research, 56(5), 809-825.

Recker, J. (2021). Scientific Research in Information Systems: A Beginner's Guide (2nd ed.). Springer.

Mackie, J. L. (1965). Causes and Conditions. American Philosophical Quarterly, 2(4), 245-264.

Gable, G. G. (1994). Integrating Case Study and Survey Research Methods: An Example in Information Systems. European Journal of Information Systems, 3(2), 112-126.

Chalmers, A. F. (2013). What Is This Thing Called Science? (4th ed.). Hackett.

Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (2001). Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference (2nd ed.). Houghton Mifflin.

Taylor, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. Harper and Bros.

March, J. G., & Simon, H. A. (1958). Organizations. John Wiley & Sons.

Nelson, R. R., & Winter, S. G. (1982). An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Harvard University Press.