Developing Doctorateness in Management Education: Insights From Harnessing Paradoxes in the African Context

Management educators play a vital role in preparing doctoral candidates, not only for attaining their qualification, but also with transferable skills for making a contribution beyond graduation. The concept of doctorateness, reflecting the doctoral identity demonstrated in high levels of thinking and an original contribution, is a lens through which the preparation of doctoral candidates in management can be viewed. While the concept of doctorateness has received attention in doctoral education research more broadly, its relevance in management education and how it could be developed remains underexplored. In this narrative essay, we draw on our experiences of doctoral education in South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, Mauritius and Kenya to reflect on challenging paradoxes experienced by doctoral candidates, and the opportunities inherent in those paradoxes for developing doctorateness. Viewing African doctoral contexts as sites for theory building, we suggest a ‘doctorateness development framework’ to guide management educators. It draws on elements of doctoral intelligence such as the ‘knowing’, ‘doing’, ‘thinking’ and ‘willing’ domains in harnessing the generative opportunities offered by paradoxes. We discuss the framework as a source of teaching strategies for the development of doctorateness in management education in African contexts and in ones further afield.