Sviluppo delle conoscenze e formazione alla ricerca nelle discipline aziendali

The value of human resources involved in research activity is a key factor to guarantee a long term perspective in developing management knowledge. This value is partially influenced by how new management scholars are trained within university through doctoral programmes. The aim of this study is twofold: (a) describing the current system for training new management scholars; (b) presenting a proposal to improve some characteristics of such a system. The article is organized into five sections, besides introduction. The second section shows how management knowledge is developed in Italy. The third section examines both how new researchers are educated and the current offering of doctoral programmes in Italy. The fourth section proposes a comparative analysis among Italian and foreign PhD programmes. The fifth section highlights some potential improvements of Italian doctoral programmes. The last section includes final considerations.