DBA Thesis check ins – November 2021

As part of the core requirements to complete a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA), candidates are asked to present their research annually to the Geneva Business School research community, led by Dr. Oliver Elliot, the Head of Research at Geneva Business School. This offers them a chance to ‘check-in’ and test their hypotheses with fellow researchers and troubleshoot issues that arise over the typically long timeframe of Doctoral research programs.

Madrid Campus Director, Academic Dean, and current Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) candidate, Hector Martin reviewed his research before the Geneva Business School research community in late Fall. His research is looking for a correlation between the language used in the decision-making process of startup key decision-makers and the success of their organizations.

In November 2021, Hector presented his research to date which aims to formulate guidelines and recommendations for startup founders to highlight how to identify the best language to utilize among multilingual speakers in order to maximize success in their entrepreneurial endeavors.

This study aims to find out whether there is a correlation between the language used in the decision-making process of startup key decision-makers and the success of their organizations.

We have the goal to explore the impact of the cognitive phenomenon known as the foreign language effect – a change in the way in which humans face and solve certain problems depending on whether they are faced in a first or a second language – in the decision-making in the context of startup companies, as well as the possible application of the results of this study to improve the decision-making for startup founders in the future.

With this study, we intend to help entrepreneurs with making the decision of which language they will primarily use in order to make decisions with the objective of maximizing their chances of success.