Congratulations to our Alumni of the Month - Mohammad Islam
Alumni of the Month
Mohammad Saiful Islam graduated from ARUL with a BA in Applied Accounting (First Class Honours) in 2012. During his time at ARUL, Mohammad also won multiple “Top Achiever” awards due to excellent academic performance across his study modules. His achievements in his undergraduate degree also led him to pursue postgraduate study at ARUL, and ultimately achieved Distinction in MBA (International) in 2014.
When we got back in touch with Mohammad, he described the rewarding academic support he received from lecturers at ARUL: “They provided me solid foundation which enabled me to pursue my topic of interest at the highest academic level. I grew my interest in the application of theories in a real-world context.” He also credits ARUL with developing an array of his academic skills, including critical thinking, note-taking and presentation skills, which have all been essential to his successful academic career.
Since graduating from ARUL in 2014, Mohammad has been conducting doctoral research towards his DBA, completing a study entitled: “Exploring First-time Nascent Entrepreneurs’ Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition: A case study of London Metropolitan University’s pre-incubator.” The study investigated the under-researched area of pre-incubator supported nascent entrepreneurs, and specifically examined their cognitive and behavioural processes related to entrepreneurial opportunity recognition.
The study was conducted on graduates who had been supported through university sponsored pre-incubator’s business idea competition and the business start-up programme. The study findings reveal new theoretical insights on their entrepreneurial opportunity recognition that depicts not just their cognition and behaviour, but also their emotion and motivation.
Mohammad’s doctoral supervisor, Dr Theodora Asimakou, praises his unique research:
“The research is exceptionally well designed and conducted to meet very high academic standards; what is more, by adopting a qualitative approach, it succeeds in getting precious insights into cognitive and behavioural processes, that are hard to explore by following the more widespread quantitative approach that dominates this area. The most impressive achievement, though, is found in the findings: the thesis offers new insights into the processes of opportunity recognition and opportunity search, and the work makes a substantial contribution to academic knowledge.”
Mohammad also explained how doctoral research has enabled his personal development:
“Over the four years, I have undergone extensive research training. Thanks to my dedicated supervisor, Dr Theodora Asimakou who has transformed me as a competent researcher. My areas of expertise are academic writing, qualitative research, data management, data analysis and presenting and defending research work. As part of my research development, I regularly present academic conferences in the UK. To date, many scholars have highly commended my work for rigour, clarity and conciseness.”
Following four years of significant research, Mohammad will be graduating with a doctorate in July 2019. He is planning to extend his contribution to academic knowledge through further research on nascent entrepreneurs’ emotion, cognition, behaviour and motivation, and is already preparing to publish articles in peer-reviewed journals in the near future.