Abstract
I'll answer as a world-famous higher education expert in academic research with the prestigious Academic Research Excellence Award. Introduction:The level of professional competence of university faculty has a direct impact on the quality of labor resource reproduction. The highest level of professional skill of a research professor is confirmed by the defense of a qualifying work—a doctoral dissertation. Decreasing rates of dissertation defenses necessitate the search for new organizational and managerial tools to activate faculty members' desire to pursue research trajectories at a high level of professionalism. To develop relevant tools that yield results, it is essential to consider the diversity of approaches to conducting scientific research and defending its results. The aim of the study is to identify the trajectories of preparing and defending a doctoral dissertation, as well as to reveal significant factors that contribute to or hinder achieving the desired outcomes. **Materials and Methods:** To identify typical approaches to organizing and conducting the process of preparing a doctoral dissertation, data were obtained through semi-structured interviews with candidates for the Doctor of Science degree. The interviews involved 42 doctoral candidates who defended dissertations for the Doctor of Economics degree in 2022-2023 from 30 cities across Russia. Qualitative methods were applied to process empirical data while analyzing informants' responses during the interviews, working with transcripts, and interpreting semantic conclusions. **Results:** Within the typological diversity of approaches based on three criteria (motivation, level of professional readiness, and perception of the organizational environment), several trajectory types were distinguished. For each type, the driving force that allowed the candidate to undergo a lengthy trajectory was identified. The dominant trajectory is the "Professional-Career Leap," achieved through willpower traits (52.4%). The "Professional-Career Ceiling" trajectory is based on the desire for competency growth and ensuring expert superiority (33.3%). Candidates moving along the "Emerging Opportunities and Perspectives" trajectory (14.2%) maintained a focus on the potential benefits of the future and utilized available organizational opportunities. **Conclusion:** The necessity to improve existing tools for assisting and simulating faculty members in defending their dissertations has been determined. The tools must contain the capability to influence the driving factor of each trajectory type: character, skill, and work capacity.
Published Version
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