Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 29, 2018

Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting

Diversity and Persistence
Exploring Factors Related to Graduate Business Student Retention and Success

As business continues to globalize, diversity in the workplace becomes even more important. Because a graduate business degree is often used as a criterion to set candidates apart for leadership roles, a low number of women and people of color in MBA, IMBA, DBA, and PhD programs can impact their representation in leadership. The following research is a case study of a global business school based in Europe to determine if different types of students, including women and those from non-western countries, are succeeding at the same rates as male students from Europe and North America. Overall, the research revealed that there is no statistically significant difference between the graduation rates of male or female students but that students from nonwestern countries were less likely to complete their degrees than students from Europe and North America.