Nevertheless, Akinola’s degree still counts as a PhD in (a subfield of) business from a top-ranked business school.
More to the point, Akinola’s chair was Wendy Mendes, who is not a business researcher, indeed was never even a member of the business school at all, but rather was part of the Harvard Psychology department (she’s now at UCSF). While Akinola’s two other committee members were from the business school, one was Max Bazerman who is really a psychologist who just happens to be at HBS but would be perfectly comfortable in any university psychology department, and the other was Dave Thomas whose true expertise consists of the sociology of race relations (and who is currently the dean of Georgetown McDonough). The upshot is that Akinola’s committee and dissertation is a clear example of the diversity of research that comprises modern day business academia, to the point, that the dissertation may not have any clear connection to business at all.
{The fact is, at least at HBS, all you need are 3 committee signatures, of which only 1 has to come from HBS, in order to graduate with a PhD in business. You are perfectly free to garner faculty signatures from other Harvard departments and many business PhD students do so. Indeed, some of the faculty signatures can be from another university entirely. {I can think of at least one HBS student whose chair wasn’t even from Harvard at all, but rather was from MIT.} }
Marketing I would agree. But I would argue that the management doctoral program at least at HBS is highly flexible and might very well accommodate a criminal justice dissertation.
As a case in point, I would point to current HBS management doctoral student Peter Scoblic, whose research seems to be focused on political science rather than business per se. {Scoblic was a former editor at The New Republic and Foreign Policy magazine.} Nevertheless, HBS not only admitted him, but also has yet to expel him, so HBS seems to accept what he is doing. If they continue to let Scoblic hang around the business school while conducting political science research, I don’t see why it would be out of the realm of possibility that they would allow somebody else to do criminal justice research. And like I said, all that Scoblic needs to complete the program is 3 faculty signatures, nothing more. Even if most of HBS loathes his research, if he can find just 3 faculty members who agree with him, he’s golden.
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=740350
But I think it also important to note that Akinola’s police shootings paper was her job market paper when she was on the business school job market. Clearly that paper succeeded: She successfully placed at Columbia Business School, one of the world’s top business schools, and I believe she had offers from several other top business schools as well. Again, I believe that’s additional evidence of the breadth of research that modern-day business academia will consider.
Now, I agree with your point that Akinola’s post-dissertation work has nothing to do with criminal justice, but rather pivoted to more traditional organizational research. But I think it should be emphasized that nobody at Columbia could be sure that Akinola would have successfully made that pivot, nor that she would have even tried. Columbia Business School provides (astounding) 7-year contracts to new junior faculty that can only be pre-terminated for cause. If Akinola had simply decided that she wanted to use those 7 years to pursue additional criminal justice research that has nothing to do with business whatsoever, frankly, nobody at Columbia could have stopped her for the length of her contract. Granted, they would have not extended her contract, but nevertheless, she would have still have presumably used those years to build a robust criminal justice publication list with which to jump to a true criminal justice department.
While I’m aware that that last paragraph might sound Machiavellian, I would couch that by saying that the healthy way for any junior faculty to approach their contracts is to treat them as well-paid long-term postdocs, where for the length of your contract, you conduct the type of research that inspires you. If you’re promoted at the end of your contract, wonderful. If not, oh well, at least you pursued research that you enjoyed. Pursuing research avenues that you don’t care about only because you think that’s what your department wants is a recipe for mental anguish. Hence, if Akinola had decided that she was interested in pursuing more police shootings research, I would argue that she should have done exactly that, even if that’s not what Columbia Business School might have necessarily wanted. After all, it’s your career, not theirs.
{And besides, Akinola is being paid over $200k a year just in salary alone as a business school professor, not even counting Columbia’s generous retirement plan and other benefits. Adding in Columbia’s highly generous faculty housing subsidy, and her true pay is probably closer to $250k a year. Having a 7-year guaranteed contract paying $250k a year for most of us would be a life-changing experience, even after factoring in the high taxes and cost of living of NYC. [Even after Fed/State/NYC income taxes and FICA, she would still be taking home more than $150k a year. Even if she then spends $70k a year on living costs, she’s still banking $80k a year. After 7 years, that’s $500k in the bank, not including her retirement plan.] So even if we imagine that Akinola had continued her police shooting research for her entire 7 year contract at Columbia but could not subsequently find a suitable criminal justice faculty position, hey, she would still walk away with a small fortune.}
All this is a long-winded way of saying that modern-day business academia is far more flexible than generally believed. There frankly are plenty of business doctoral students and even business faculty whose research ties to business are tenuous at best. {Indeed, Rakesh Khurana, former HBS Professor and current Dean of Harvard College, even wrote in his book ‘From Higher Aims to Hired Hands’ that nowadays many business faculty have no intrinsic interest in business.} Business academia might therefore readily accommodate somebody with an interest in criminal justice.