Programme Architecture
A systemic programme by design
This programme is intentionally designed to mirror the complexity it foregrounds. Its architecture is a complex adaptive and living system that both mirrors the world you lead in and scaffolds your journey while allowing emergence, iteration, and transformation. It revolves around four interacting tenets, each active throughout your journey, guided by an epistemic stance of Relational Engaged Scholarship and structured over two narrative phases. This is knowledge co-created with practice, for practice, and in context, where your leadership becomes the laboratory for new understanding and transformation.
"Learning at this level is not linear—it’s systemic. Each insight reshapes the whole.”
Dr. Catriona Burke, Academic Director
The complex problem — the catalyst for inquiry
Your journey begins not with a research question, but with a real-world paradox, a high-stakes, “wicked problem” deeply embedded in your organisational or societal context. You will map systems, challenge boundaries, surface assumptions, and trace interdependencies to reveal the dynamics, both visible and hidden, shaping your phenomenon of interest. Through this process, you’ll move beyond cause and effect into the art of systemic inquiry. Learning to see complexity as a source of insight, creativity, and transformation rather than constraint.
Description of image
A circular diagram labelled “Relational Engaged Scholarship” at the centre, surrounded by four illustrated concepts arranged around it. Top left: “The Complex Problem” with an icon of a tangled line. Top right: “Knowledge Frontiers” with an icon of a globe and a small flag. Bottom right: “The Transformative Leader” with an icon of a person raising their arms beside two smaller figures. Bottom left: “Research Mastery” with an icon of an open book and a glowing lightbulb. © Burke (2025).
Wicked problems are those that cannot be definitively described, and for which no single solution exists.
(adapted from Rittel and Webber, 1973)
Knowledge frontiers — the evolving scholarship of practice
The Knowledge Frontiers form the intellectual and research arenas that anchor your inquiry. In a traditional DBA, these might be called disciplines or modules. Here, they are cutting-edge and ever-evolving domains of advanced scholarship and practice, representing the leading edge of thought and action at the intersection of leadership, sustainability, and systemic transformation. You will align your complex problem with one (or, where relevant, two) of these evolving frontiers: Systems Thinking, Reflexive Futures & Systemic Intervention, Responsible Leadership, Responsible & Social Innovation, Sustainable Production, Consumption & the Circular Economy, Sustainable Development Policy, Governance & Accountability and Responsible Digitalisation, Datafication & AI. Through this engagement, you move beyond applying existing theory and become part of shaping it. Each frontier provides a locus for inquiry where your research advances both practice and scholarship, guided by a systemic worldview and sustainability meta-competencies that connect insight to action and leadership to transformation.
The Knowledge Frontiers are not subjects to be studied — they are cutting-edge, ever-evolving spaces of scholarship you join, extend, and help redefine through your engagement with the Executive DBA.
Research mastery — from insight to impact
You will develop the rigour and agility of a scholar-practitioner, mastering the methods that transform insight into actionable knowledge. Our design privileges Evidence-Based Management (EBM) principles, delivered in partnership with the renowned Centre for Evidence-Based Management (CEBMA).
It integrates practice-based research, engaged scholarship, and generative literature inquiry, positioning your professional expertise at the forefront of contemporary scholarship. The outcome is research mastery that produces level 10 knowledge; academically robust, methodologically rigorous, and strategically consequential for your organisation and for the systems in which it operates.
The transformative leader — reflexivity in action
At the heart of this doctorate lies the transformation of the self as leader. You will cultivate deep reflexive capacity, the ability to question assumptions, reconcile paradoxes, and navigate uncertainty with clarity, courage, and integrity. Through guided inquiry and critical reflection, you will evolve from accomplished senior executive to systemic actor, responsible change-maker, and knowledge broker - a leader capable of shaping the very systems in which you act.
Transformation here is not only something you lead — it is something you become.
