VHB-ProDok is our support programme for PhD students in business studies. It comprises up to 40 courses, which are conducted at regular intervals and thus facilitate long-term planning. The ProDok Faculty workgroup is responsible for the programme content in coordination with the VHB Board.   

Anyone who is interested can choose from two pillars on the course programme depending on the focus area and case-by-case needs:

• Interdepartmental method courses that either mediate a wider overarching portfolio of research methods or focus on specific research methodology.
• Department-specific courses that concentrate on content-related and/or methodological research issues in the six departments Accounting, Finance, Management, Marketing, Operations or Business Information Systems and Engineering.

VHB-ProDok is primarily designed to supplement doctoral education in business studies at the respective universities in a point-by-point and tailored manner. Furthermore, ProDok offers the possibility of taking a complete course programme where there is no doctoral programme in order to achieve the necessary qualifications/ECTS on the way to completing a successful doctorate. We thus offer the opportunity for someone who needs to acquire 30 LP/ECTS to achieve them via ProDok, for instance.

In principle, the courses do not have to be attended sequentially. Instead, the ProDok service forms useful groups of courses, which are designed to make it easier for doctoral students and their supervisors to choose from a broad course catalogue and can thus be regarded simultaneously as a recommendation for the heterogeneous developmental paths of doctoral students in our discipline. ProDok is basically open to anyone who is interested in our specialist discipline. The respective syllabi contain the content requirements for the individual courses.

The courses are designed for 15 to 20 participants and correspond to 6 LP/ECTS. To date, the recognition of these credit points at the faculties needs to be clarified individually.