On failures in academia: My PhD journey

Tells the story of my PhD dissertation nearly 30 years after it was all but failed

Anne-Wil Harzing - Mon 28 Apr 2036 10:15 (updated Sat 2 May 2026 13:45)

It was twenty-(nine) years ago today, but the band didn’t come out to play. Well… not for me at least. It did for others; it was graduation day, and the ceremony would be starting in 15 minutes. I was really looking forward to giving celebratory speeches for my five Masters’ dissertation students. But I decided to quickly pick up my (snail) mail at the department’s secretariate l as I wasn’t sure it would still be open by the end of the ceremony.

And there it was! The letter by the chair of the examination committee informing me of the verdict on my recently submitted PhD: it was not approved by the majority (two out of three) of the examiners. The accompanying examiners’ comments implied I needed to completely rewrite my PhD and cut about half of it in the process. It was not quite a failed PhD. But after working on it so hard for four years, sacrificing so much of my free time –  I was working as a lecturer at the same time – it certainly felt like that.

The letter was lying there “open en bloot” (i.e. without an envelope) in my mail tray. Anyone could have seen it; the secretary certainly did. My cheeks were burning with shame, soon all my colleagues would know I had failed miserably. I was fighting back the tears. But I was due at the graduation ceremony – chaired by the professor whose disturbing letter I had just read – and I couldn’t spoil my students’ big day. So, I ran to the toilet, sat there silently for 5 minutes and fixed my face. Determined not to let anyone notice, I played the part of the proud supervisor for my students and their parents, all smiles and praise.

Later that day I talked things over with my husband. He had taken me for my favourite ice-cream (Coupe Picasso) in the Italian ice-cream parlour we visited often. I couldn’t keep my tears back anymore. I had just secured my first permanent job. Would that job offer even stand without a PhD? Would my academic career be over before it had begun? We were due to move countries for my new job a month later. We had already bought a house and the removalist was booked. Would we need to cancel all of that? There were so many questions in my mind…

Rest assured that – after a year of uncertainty – my story did have a happy ending. But it certainly didn’t look like it on the day, and the feeling of shame never fully left me. So, over the years, I have kept quiet about this hick-up early in my career. Yes, I have told a few close academic friends about it, but I have never made this public. So today, with the 30-year rule nearly satisfied, I decided to do so, though with full anonymity of the people and universities involved.

Below I take you through my journey step-by-step, including the context, my PhD process, the outcome, the examiners' verdict, my many questions and doubts, and finally the happy ending. However, I also share my own reflections nearly 30 years after the fact and consider the lessons we can draw from this story about academic life in general. In case you want to skip to a particular section, you can find a Table of Contents below.

Table of contents

The context – an independent PhD

Despite being rather shy (see: This little girl: message to my younger self), I am a very determined, self-driven – and oftentimes even stubborn – person. According to my parents, my first words – after mummy and daddy – were “zelluf doen” [I want to do this on my own]. Even as a child I wanted to be independent and not have others telling me what to do :-).

This meant that when, in the early 1990s, I realized I needed to do a PhD to stay in academia – a world I had come to feel very much at home in – I didn’t want to enroll in a PhD formal program in the Netherlands, where topics were often driven by the PhD supervisor. Moreover, after having completed two full 4-year degrees and spending a total of eight years in Higher Education, I didn’t relish attending more courses either.

So, I did what many Dutch academics had done for decades: I completed my PhD part-time while holding a lecturing job. My only problem was that, after my second degree, I had started working as a free-lancer for the (Dutch) Open University, creating courses on Industrial Relations and International HRM. At that time, the Open University didn’t have a research tradition, and I didn’t have colleagues who could guide me in my research. However, as I was editing a research-based textbook in International HRM (now in its seventh edition) to accompany the OU course on IHRM, I was interacting regularly with a team of professors. So, I asked two of them to be my informal supervisors.

In fact, my PhD resulted from this same International HRM textbook. I had written the book outline and had planned a chapter on HQ-subsidiary relationships. As I couldn’t find an author for it, I decided to write it myself, and immersed myself in the literature in the field. Ultimately the topic wasn’t a good fit for the textbook. But as I had already done so much work on it, I decided I might as well do a PhD on it. Yes, I have always been the ultimate pragmatist :-).

The process – a four-year journey

I worked on my PhD manuscript for about four years in conjunction with part-time teaching-only jobs at three different universities in the Netherlands. As is true for many academics, much of my PhD work was therefore done in the evening and weekend hours. But hey, I was young and ambitious and didn’t mind. Moreover, despite the inevitable hick-ups and set-backs, it progressed quite smoothly overall, and I enjoyed many aspects of my PhD journey.

As an avid reader (see also: IB Frontline interview: personal section) I enjoyed the sourcing and reading of books and articles, even though getting access to literature was very time-consuming at the time (see also: Doing research in an analogue time). However, I found I enjoyed the practical aspects of implementing the international survey – which I had settled on as a research method – even more. This preferred focus on practical design has been a recurring feature during my academic career; I relished finding novel solutions for practical problems and helping others to do the same.

Designing and conducting the international mail survey took me a lot of time, but I managed to get an overall response rate of 20%. This compared well with the then common response rates of 6-16% for my population, senior managers. With nearly 300 responses I also managed to collect one the largest datasets at the time, prepared a dozen different company reports (for details see: Doing research in an analogue time), conducted a wide range of statistical analyses, and wrote up most of my PhD in a rare 3–4-month stretch without teaching, working 10-14 hour days six days a week. But I am getting ahead of myself. First, I presented my thesis proposal at a conference.

EIBA 1994: Becoming a millionaire (yes really!)

Other PhD students had told me it was a good idea to go to conferences in order to get feedback on your work and become known for later job searches. So, I decided to go to the 1994 EIBA (European International Business Academy) conference in Warsaw, my first conference. I participated in the doctoral consortium and won an award for the best PhD proposal. This instantly made me a millionaire. Yes really! I received a thick brown envelope stuffed with many banknotes (12 million Polish złoty), just two weeks before they took four zeroes of the currency.

I remember opening the envelope on the toilet and wondering whether I would ever again see so much money in my life. Unfortunately, exchange controls prevented me from taking the money out of the country, so I had to spend it before returning home. If you have visions of palatial homes and expensive clothes, think again: 12 million złoty only amounted to about $600 dollars. So, I simply paid my hotel bill and bought some Christmas presents. I kept one bank note as a memory (see above), it is now worthless, but even then, it was worth (much) less than a cent. A very literal case of "not worth the paper it is printed on" ;-).

In my photo album, I even found a group picture of the 1994 doctoral colloquium (see below) at which I presented my PhD proposal. I am the one in the light orange jacket. It is strange to see our famous IB academics looking so young. Apart from John Dunning they were all in their late forties to mid-fifties, much younger than I am now!

On the far left, there is Danny van den Bulcke in a rare picture without his camera. Danny was known as “Mr EIBA” (see his memorial website and travels with Danny in which his many travel companions share stories and pictures). Then there are Jean-Francois Hennart (5th from left, Frontline IB interview), Stephen Young (in the middle in a white sweater, tribute by Strathclyde university) and John Dunning (towering over me, Wikipedia entry, tribute in the EIBA newsletter).

For more pictures of the early generation of IB scholars see: Seven EIBAians in search of an author. The right-hand picture is me giving a thank-you speech at the same conference. Yes, even then I preferred colourful jackets to the more common grey/blue/brown/black ones.

Building a portfolio – side projects during my PhD

Side-projects during your PhD can help you create a varied academic portfolio and make you stand out on the job market. My portfolio focused mainly on publications and networks. However, stakeholder engagement, social media, and volunteering in professional organizations are also fruitful avenues to build up a distinctive portfolio. My focus on publications was definitely motivated by the knowledge that they were essential to get a permanent job. Yes, that was true even thirty years ago! The academic job market in the Netherlands was pretty dire in the mid-1990s; there just weren’t any vacancies.

The situation had been quite different in the previous decade. Qualified academics (i.e. those with a PhD) were scarce. Many academics started working in academia after their Masters degree and either didn’t do a PhD or took more than a decade to get one. This meant that with a PhD and a handful of publications, you had a good chance of becoming an associate, or even a full Professor, within 3-5 years of completing your PhD. As a result, many incumbents at were in their thirties or early forties, not much older than I was.

Moreover, promotion to (Associate) Professor in the Netherlands was not based on merit alone, there had to be a vacant position at that level. Unfortunately, Dutch universities typically only had one professor and two associate professors in a department of about 20-40 academics. This meant that even if I would succeed in getting a job, it would take me forever to get beyond the first rung of the academic hierarchy.

So, in order to be internationally competitive, I made every effort not only to participate in conferences, but also to publish during my PhD. Thus, when I discovered a few surprising and interesting results during my literature review and data collection, I published three articles based on it. My first article was based on my “detective work” around academic referencing practices, the second used data I had collected for my PhD to test specific hypotheses on staffing policies, and the third analyzed the response rates I achieved in my survey.

1. Harzing, A.W. (1995) The persistent myth of high expatriate failure rates, International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 6, May, pp. 457-475. Available online... - Publisher's version - Related blog post - #1 in the WAIB top-20 articles in global mobility
2. Harzing, A.W. (1997) Research Note: About the paucity of empirical research in IHRM: A test of Downes framework of staffing foreign subsidiaries, Journal of International Management, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 153-167. Available online... - Related blog post
3. Harzing, A.W. (1997) Response rates in international mail surveys: Results of a 22 country study, International Business Review, vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 641-665. Available online... - Publisher's version - Related blog post

Furthermore, I published a book chapter (Borg & Harzing, 1996) on career patterns of expatriates and two more articles. The first was related to my Masters thesis on culture and organizational change (Harzing & Hofstede, 1996). The second involved the creation of a bibliography as part of the EU funded International Company Network (see also: Doing research in an analogue time), an international network that I was part of as a junior researcher (Harzing, 1995).

I also set up my own peer network (YAN=Young Academics Network). It included a group of PhD students I had met at European conferences. We shared our experiences in academia by email and gave each other advice. Finally, with a junior colleague at Tilburg University I edited a column in a professional magazine Personeelsbeleid [Personnel Management] called “Uit de ivoren toren” [From the ivory tower] discussing the latest research.

The outcome – a tome of 100,000+ words

The result of all the hard work during my four-year journey was a PhD manuscript that weighed in at well over 100,000 words, tested 90 hypotheses, and had more than 650 references. This included no less than twelve references to my own work: four published articles, two book chapters, two conference papers, my edited IHRM text-book, my Masters’ thesis, my thesis proposal, and my general company report.

My thesis had a lot of content. It provided a very rigorous review of the literature in three key areas: control mechanisms, multinational companies, and international transfers. It then integrated these fields by looking at control mechanisms in MNCs, international transfers as control mechanisms, and configurations of MNCs. The methods chapter, and both of the two results chapters ran to about 60 pages each.

But the one thing my thesis didn’t have was a strong theorical framework. My work was a rigorous application of contingency theory, with strong sensitivity to the cross-cultural research context, but this theoretical grounding was discussed rather briefly. To be honest, I have never been fond of theory. It took me more than fifteen years to appreciate its role and nearly thirty years to see its beauty, thanks in no small part to working with Christa Satish, a very strong theorist.

I am an ultimate empiricist, give me data and I’ll do forensic research to get to the bottom of something (see here for an overview of my forensic research). It is the kind of research that gives me joy (see also the necessity, meaning and joy framework in You finally made it to full professor, now what?).

So, in my PhD I did what I had seen done in most journal articles in International Business journals at the time: review the literature and then formulate and test a set of hypotheses based on that. But that’s not what my internal examiners wanted: they wanted theory-driven research. So, this led to…

The verdict – a PhD that was all but failed 

With all that I had done during my four-year PhD process, I felt that I had mastered the craft of doing research and writing it up. I had collected more responses than almost any other researcher in the field at the time, had great data, and developed an extensive publication portfolio. I had participated in a major international research project, funded by the EU and in 1994, I had won the best thesis proposal at the EIBA conference.

So, I felt quietly confident that my PhD would be passed with relatively minor corrections. Indeed, the external examiner – an experienced academic from another country with some thirty international publications under his belt – was very happy with my manuscript. This was his examiner’s report:

I have read the thesis submitted by Mrs. A.W.K. Harzing entitled “plans, procedures, and bumblebees: an international study about control mechanisms in multinational companies”. […]. I am of the opinion the thesis is:

(a) thorough in terms of the literature reviewed and the coherence of the theoretical information.

(b) well-argued and clearly set out in terms of the methodology and research objectives.

(c) statistically thorough with clear explanations of the methods used, the justification of such method and the fact that they can be substantiated by the data.

(d) thorough in terms of the discussion of the results with clear linkages to theory and practice; and

(e) well written and sensitive to the difficulties in doing cross national research

In my opinion Mrs. A.W.K. Harzing should be awarded the Ph.D degree. She has clearly met the requirements and gained considerable knowledge as a result of her studies.

Unfortunately, the two internal examiners didn’t agree with the external examiner at all; they both believed the dissertation should not be approved. Ironically, the letter informing me of this outcome consistently referred to me as Dr. A.W.K. Harzing [i.e. the title for someone who had successfully completed their PhD] instead of Drs. [the Dutch title for someone who had completed a Masters degree]. Talking about adding insult to injury!!! 

Their concerns related mostly to my presentation of the thesis. They felt it was “not presented adequately” even though one of them did acknowledge it was a “scholarly piece of research that is basically good or even excellent” and praised my results as important, interesting, and novel. More specifically, they weren’t happy with the lack of a clear overarching theoretical framework and the rather empiricist – and to them ad hoc – nature of testing 90 hypotheses. They also felt that much of my thesis was not relevant for what they thought was the primary research question. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to buy my argument that I had 3-4 research questions that were closely interrelated.

Another concern was that my writing was sometimes a bit too didactic and expansive (no doubt a hangover from my Open University days!), although the specific examples that were given made up barely more than 1% of the wordcount. Most of all they seemed to have been a bit annoyed at having to work their way through such a long document. I have some sympathy for that; academic life was busy even then.

However, the regulations at the time said that the examiners had to decide whether the PhD student had “provided sufficient proof of being able to conduct research independently so that the manuscript could be accepted as a dissertation”. Personally, I didn’t feel their comments suggested that I hadn’t passed this test, and neither did my supervisors.

The doubts – what now?

It was rather unclear from the decision letter what the next steps would be for my PhD; all it said was that my thesis was “not approved”. According to my notes at the time the official rules only allowed two options: reject the manuscript or accept it (either without changes or conditionally with minor/major changes). The latter – conditional acceptance – had been the verdict for the three most recent PhD candidates from my department.

In at least one case, this had resulted in multiple rounds of revisions. So rather than deciding whether the manuscript met the minimum hurdles, the thesis submission process became a bit like its journal equivalent, revise and revise until the examiners or reviewers are satisfied. So, there I was, an all but failed PhD with one stellar examiner’s report and two that seemed to ask me to pretty much rewrite the entire thesis, something I really didn’t want to do.

My primary supervisor – who was absolutely livid – lodged an appeal against the decision. But as this had never happened before nobody quite knew what to do. Hence, the whole process was mired in months of delays and formalities. Everyone was seemingly waiting for someone else to do “something” and there were wildly different interpretations of the options that the regulations allowed for. At no stage were the external examiner or my second supervisor contacted, and we never even received a response from the Chair of the examination committee. So, after 5 months in which nothing much happened, I ultimately decided to stop the appeal process. In any case, the whole experience had left such a bad taste in my mouth that I didn’t relish the idea of going through all the pomp and theatre of a formal public defense, even if my PhD would be approved after all.

Moreover, because of all the delays I no longer qualified for the financial subsidies to partially cover the costs of the promotion (printing 100+ copies of the thesis, rental of robes, photographer, travel costs, compulsory reception and dinner for everyone involved). According to my calculations at the time these costs would have run to ƒ15,000. It is hard to convert this to today’s money, but it amounted to nearly half a year’s net salary for me. This was not a sum we had lying around, especially after the house we had bought in the UK effectively increased 30% in price because of exchange rate fluctuations between the time of the offer and the exchange of contracts. The joys of international moves…

So instead, I waited a year and submitted what was substantively the same manuscript at my new employer in the UK. It was approved without any changes by two well-known academics in International Business and Comparative Management. They praised my manuscript for the rigorous research training it reflected, which was rather ironic as I was completely self-taught. I really enjoyed my viva, i.e. my oral defense. The examiners’ questions were by no means easy, but I was able to answer all of them to their satisfaction. In fact, it was wonderful to have a discussion with two people who were really interested in my research.

Different PhD systems, different traditions

In the British PhD system, a decision about awarding the PhD degree is made based on a detailed reading of the PhD manuscript and a 2–3-hour viva, i.e. an oral exam. After the viva, the examiners confer to decide whether the PhD candidate is allowed to pass, with the decision based on both the manuscript and the candidate’s defense at the viva. In my view this provides a much-needed and comprehensive assessment of the candidate’s ability to think beyond their immediate research. The actual PhD diploma is awarded at a regular graduation ceremony.

The Dutch system also has a formal defense; unlike the British defense it is even open to the public. Audiences can vary from a dozen to over a hundred and typically include the candidate’s colleagues, family, and friends. But this defense is conducted at a stage when the manuscript has been accepted by the examination committee and officially printed as a book. It lasts only an hour, of which 10 minutes are a presentation by the candidate, followed by – relatively gentle – questions by a panel of professors. So, it is ceremonial only, a bit of pomp and theatre to make the event memorable before the diploma is awarded. You can only fail if you – or if you faint your paranymphs – say absolutely nothing. So, the worst that can happen is that you make a bit of a fool of yourself in front of your colleagues if your responses aren’t that brilliant. Family and friends typically have no clue what you are talking about anyway :-).

The happy ending – publications and recognition

As I said, my PhD manuscript was approved without any changes, and I graduated in the UK in 1998. It was also a finalist for two dissertation awards, the Gunnar Hedlund Best Dissertation Award at the European International Business Academy and the Barry M. Richard Best Dissertation Award at the Academy of Management. Stripped of its statistical appendices and lightly edited, the same manuscript was also published as research monograph called Managing the Multinationals in Peter Buckley’s Horizons in International Business series, published by Edward Elgar (see image above).

As I was so junior and unknown Edward Elgar didn't want to give me any royalties unless I sold more than 750 copies and made me do all the actual page formatting myself. The book was delivered "camera-ready" to Edward Elgar, after having been printed on my own printer at home :-). And yet... with 645 Google Scholar citations my book is now the most cited book in the Horizons in International Business series. Only three books garnered more than 200 citations and most only got 40-50 citations, if that. I am under no illusion that all those citing the book had read it, some will have copied the citation from someone else (see also: Are referencing errors undermining our scholarship and credibility?). But still... my book must have been useful to some!

In addition to individual sales, the book has also been acquired by nearly 200 university libraries. Most of these were in the Anglosphere (United States: 82, United Kingdom: 26, Canada: 10, Australia: 6, Ireland: 4), but copies were bought by a substantial number of libraries in Germany (16) and the Netherlands (8) too, and there were holdings in several Southern European and Northern European countries, as well as in Turkey and Israel. What surprised me most was the book's popularity in libraries in Asia: Malaysia (5), China (3), Taiwan (3), Japan (2), Singapore (2) and the Philippines.

Another memorable endorsement of the book was given by John Child at the Academy of Management meeting in 1999. He gave a presentation after winning the distinguished scholar award that year. As his work had been so important to my PhD research, I duly queued with dozens of others to congratulate him and thank him. I introduced myself and before I could say something else, he baffled me by saying: “I have just read your book and loved it, especially all the rigorous footnotes, very Germanic”. One of my heroes had read my PhD and he liked it; I was walking on air for the rest of the conference!

Beyond the book, published in 1999, my PhD was also the source for six more articles in highly ranked journals between 2000 and 2003 (as well as a few more minor publications). Obviously, they were not a straight reworking of my PhD manuscript, that would not have been possible. All required new framing and additional analyses, and several required additional data collection. But they were all based on the work I did during my PhD.

1. Harzing, A.W. (2000) An empirical test and extension of the Bartlett and Ghoshal typology of multinational companies, Journal of International Business Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 101-120. Available online... - Publisher's version - Related blog post
2. Harzing, A.W. (2000) Cross-national industrial mail surveys: Why do response rates differ between countries, Industrial Marketing Management, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 243-254. Available online... - Publisher's version - Related blog post
3. Harzing, A.W. (2001) Who's in charge: an empirical study of executive staffing practices in foreign subsidiaries, Human Resource Management, Summer 2001, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 139-158. [Reprinted in International Human Resource Management, Sage Publications 2009] Available online... - Publisher's version - Related blog post
4. Harzing, A.W. (2001) Of bears, bumble-bees and spiders: The role of expatriates in controlling foreign subsidiaries, Journal of World Business, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 366-379. [Listed as one of the top-25 most cited articles on expatriation in McNulty & Brewster (2017)] Available online... - Publisher's version - Related blog post
5. Harzing, A.W. (2002) Acquisitions versus greenfield investments: International strategy and management of entry modes, Strategic Management Journal, vol. 23, March, pp. 211-227. Available online... - Publisher's version - Related blog post
6. Harzing, A.W.; Sorge, A.M. (2003) The relative impact of country-of-origin and universal contingencies on internationalization strategies and corporate control in multinational enterprises: World-wide and European perspectives, Organisation Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 187-214. [ Available online... - Publisher's version - Related blog post

The last article – on country-of-origin effects in MNCs – won the Roland Calori Prize for the best paper published in Organization Studies 2003-2004.

This is an OS style scientific paper at its best. It fits perfectly the three criteria - rooted in Social Sciences, display methodological quality and theoretical innovativeness, highlight our understanding of differences and relatedness - and the EGOS values. It also addresses an issue that common sense had oversimplified in the past. In a way Harzing & Sorge's findings about MNCs could be a lesson for science and for what EGOS aims at in its field of knowledge; to give the floor to diversity of expressions so that they can dialogue and cross-fertilize. To avoid normal science syndromes, let us be multinational while keeping our research fertilized by our respective 'countries of origin' perspectives and traditions.

Jean-Claude Thoenig

The reflection (1) – What do I think of the feedback now?

Looking back, I do fully appreciate some of the external examiners’ concerns about the readability of the manuscript. If I had to do this again, I would definitely have restructured the thesis a little, condensed some of the material, and removed some of the hypotheses. Then again, most dissertations are not very readable; most are in fact never read by anyone beyond the examiners. They are merely there to demonstrate that the PhD student has learned the craft of doing research.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can also understand their insistence on a more fully developed theoretical framework a bit better. Expectations in the internal examiners’ own research fields had experienced a recent transformation. They had morphed from a more ad-hoc style of empirical research with hypotheses mainly derived from prior literature – as I had done – to a rather heavy emphasis on theory-based hypothesizing. So, they might have simply wanted to signal they endorsed these new standards.

My internal examiners were also relatively new professors; both had been appointed as full professor quite soon after finishing their PhDs, being part of the “boom before the bust” in the Dutch academic labour market I referred to earlier. This meant that they hadn’t graduated many (or even any) PhD students themselves. In the Netherlands only full Professors have the “ius promovendi”. So, they may have lacked direct experience of how existential a negative decision like the one I received can be for PhD students.

But the most important clash was probably between different systems (see also: different PhD systems, different traditions). I had written up my manuscript in a style that was quite common for an Anglo PhD at the time, but I had submitted it within the Dutch PhD system, which expects PhD manuscripts to be formally published as a book. As such, expectations for succinctness and coherence probably differ from those in the UK or Australia. My interpretation is given credence by the fact that, at the time, half a dozen other academics in the UK praised the manuscript as one of the best they had seen and definitely meeting the standards expected.

Even so, I still don't think their decision to all but fail my PhD was justified. What the internal examiners should probably have said - and what I would have said if I had been one of the examiners - is the following.“You have clearly mastered the craft of doing research, and you have done a reasonable job in writing it up. However, you are a bit longwinded at times, and we would have preferred a clearer theoretical grounding and fewer hypotheses. So, we will give you a conditional pass with the following specific changes, but if you want to publish this work in journals, you will need to work a bit more on your theoretical framing and on streamlining the story”.

Feedback style - all meat and no bun

Looking back at their feedback now, I also realise it was rather instrumental and technocratic; it has little of the developmental and constructive feedback that is now commonly expected – though by no means always provided – in journal reviews. Combined with typical Dutch bluntness this meant there wasn’t much “bun” to soften the hamburger of critique. One of the examiners included three lines of positive comments, followed by two pages of critique. But at least he had attempted some concrete suggestions of how to address his critique. The other examiner wrote barely 300 words; his comments were generic and basically said: “this is not a dissertation, go back to the drawing board”. He provided an almost grudging acknowledgment that the research was technically of a good standing, but this was undone by another generic critical comment in the subclause.

Then again, this particular style of feedback was not unusual for journal submissions at the time, or even 5-10 years later. Back in the “good old days” – that really weren’t that good in many respects – critique appeared to be seen mainly as a demonstration of your own ability and as a justification for rejection. That is, it was mainly self-oriented, not other-oriented. Journal reviewers would routinely write only a few lines pretty much amounting to “I would have done this differently”. Or they would simply say things like: “you shouldn’t have taken a functionalist approach”, or “you should have done quantitative research on this”. So, it is possible that my internal examiners were shaped by these experiences early in their careers too and thought the way they delivered feedback was the norm.

Without wanting to reinforce gender stereotypes, the fact that all senior academics at that time were male probably didn’t help either. During my career, I have encountered many male academics (and some female ones) who seem to feel that any display of kindness or considerateness on their side would be a sign of weakness diminishing their own competitive standing. And given prevalent gender norms at the time, it might well have done. So, whilst I wish their verdict had been communicated differently, I don’t really blame my examiners, not least because ultimately the experience shaped me positively...

The reflection (2) – how the experience shaped me

As alluded to in “The happy ending”, my “all but failed” PhD experience was ultimately a “blessing in disguise”. By submitting my thesis in the UK, I ended up with degrees from different countries, which – as someone working in international and cross-cultural management – is a bonus. I was given the opportunity to publish my PhD as a research monograph with an official publisher, rather than self-publish it as is common practice in the Netherlands. The verdict also made me even more determined to show that I could deliver good work; I published six more articles in top journals (partly) based on my PhD.

In addition, three further positives emerged out of what at first sight appeared to be a disaster. First, the experience developed my resilience and sense of perspective. Looking back, I am proud of how I handled the high level of uncertainty in the year after the negative verdict. In that year, my husband and I moved countries, refurbished our home and garden, and hosted over a dozen visitors. I started a new job which saw me thrown in at the deep end, teaching experienced MBA students and executives much older than me, and coping with a very high teaching load when a close colleague left. This definitely helped taking my mind of my “failed PhD” and I learned to put it into perspective. Sometimes being busy is the best way to cope.

Second, I learned who my friends were. My two supervisors were with me through thick and thin; they comforted me during the five difficult months after my “all but failed” PhD, months in which I tried to explore several options in parallel. During my PhD they had always taught me to persevere. I also received great support from my new supervisor and my new colleagues. Not only did my employment offer stand without a PhD, but they also worked hard to find a loophole in the regulations, allowing me to submit my thesis there as a member of staff within a year. As a young academic eager to grow, I ultimately left this university after 3-4 years for an Australian adventure. However, I still have pleasant memories of the friendship and collegiality I experienced there.

Finally, the harsh feedback I received on my PhD and my early journal publications has definitely shaped me as an academic mentor, and I think it did so for the better. When I wrote examiners reports for PhD students myself, or decision letters as PhD director when acting as chair of the examiners, I was always at pains to point out the positive sides of the work under evaluation first and end with an encouraging note. I knew how it felt to see four years of work evaporate.

In my journal reviews I also try my very best to be both constructive and developmental, especially if the authors are clearly ECRs. Even my shortest reviews are typically three times as long as the report I received from one of my internal examiners. They are also much more specific in terms of suggestions on how to improve, including many references to useful literature. Many ECRs have not received any research training nor have experienced senior colleagues they can consult. Hence, reviews are often the only way they can learn the craft (see also: Understanding the academic knowledge creation process: How to learn better?).

The moral – proactiveness and resilience rule

I was lucky that I was able to re-submit my PhD manuscript at another university a year later and see it passed without any changes. This will not be possible in most cases. Hence, if you receive the kind of comments I got and want to continue in academia, you will need to swallow the bitter pill and spend another 6-12 months on revisions, hoping that it will not simply be the first round in a series of revision rounds.

That said, if you are enrolled in a regular PhD programme and you have a supervisory team on site (both of my supervisors had their full-time employment at another university), this is much less likely to happen. So, if you are currently a PhD student, please don’t be scared that you might experience the same thing as I did. Yes, some PhDs are failed, but this is rare. Typically, it only happens if – after years of trying to get the student to improve – supervisors throw up their hands in the air and give in to the student’s request to be allowed to submit.

However, there is a broader lesson here. If I had been allocated different examiners, the original (negative) decision might have been very different. We often call decision-making in academia “a roll of the dice”. With a different set of reviewers for your paper, a different composition of your promotion panel, or even just the difference between a decision before or after the lunch break at your grant application panel, the results could have been very different. Moreover, there are biases at play in any decision-making process, and if the decision in question is comparative, the make-up of your comparator set might well determine your success or failure. And sometimes you are just unlucky…

So that’s why throughout my own career I have always followed my supervisors’ advice and just “tried again”: submitted my paper to another journal, applied again for promotion in the next round, applied to a different funding scheme. The key to success in academia is typically not superior intellect (though obviously that helps!), it is proactiveness and resilience (see also Be proactive, resilient & realistic!). Success may sprout even in a hostile environment. But it definitely helps to find oases of respite in the form of mentors (see also IB Frontline interview: mentoring section) or communities such as the CYGNA Women in Academia Network. Personally, I can honestly say that the many failures in my career have only fired me up to improve and “prove them wrong”. So, don’t give up! 

Related blogposts

• What's the story behind your first paper?
• Five lessons from my first publications
• What made my early work impactful?
• How to avoid a desk-reject in seven steps [1/8]
• Book series: Crafting your career in academia
• Be proactive, resilient & realistic!
• How to create a successful academic career: AIB - Ask, Invest & Believe
• The ABC of research across career stages
• CV of failures

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