Playing a Risky Game! Exploring Doctoral Student’s Duality in Responding to Job Market Discourses

The current study was set to understand how a doctoral coursework journey shapes doctoral students’ understanding of academic research in Indian business schools. We present the initial motivation of doctoral students, the change in the understanding of research, mechanisms which shape this understanding and the responses to the dominant market discourse prevailing in academics. The findings are drawn through a qualitative research design based on interviews, conversations, and secondary sources of information. The initial motivation for ‘pursuit of knowledge and individuality’ gets shaped as a ‘risky game’; a pragmatic sense of research, influenced by the job market discourses transmitted through the mechanism of ‘advising’ and ‘peer confirmation.’ We infer the presence of dualistic nature in responding to market discourse, submission and resistance. While doctoral students are compelled to accommodate the market discourses into their plans for survival, they also strategize not to relinquish their own meaning of the research.