The FINANCIAL — For the first time in the Transcaucasia region, Boris Lezhava successfully defended his dissertation “The Impact of Familiarity and Involvement on the Evaluation Process of perceived Service Quality” in Business administration, concentration Marketing.
Georgia State University (Atlanta, USA), dealing with USAID, sponsored the PHD programmes of six Georgians at Georgia State University. The programmes were in the directions of marketing, finances and management. According to the studying system students were using cross works and have finally presented their dissertations in Georgia.
“Caucasus University (CU) is on its way to becoming a world class university,” Bijan Fazlolahi, Professor of Georgia State University, told The FINANCIAL.
“We are on our way to moving Caucasus University from being a teaching university to a research university. It is necessary to become a research university in order to get world class acreditation. You cannot get high acreditation from US or European universities without having PHD programmes; without producing research articles that are published in world class journals,” Fazlolahi says.
Dr. Lejava’s disertation was on how companies measure service quality. “If you cannot measure a goal, an objective, you never know if you have reached it or not. So Dr. Lejava has developed this instrument for how and when to measure service quality. Another step of Buba’s dissertation work will be consultations for Georgia companies on how they can measure service quality. So that will be another angle from the university, providing services to the community of the whole of the Caucasus. The quality of this work is very good. So I am sure we will be able to sell these services to the business communities,” Fazlolahi tells.
Professor Naveen Donthu was thesis coordinator. “Boris first came to Atlanta four years ago. Georgia State University was involved in studying programmes here. I was a PHD programme coordinator and I was close to this programme. We discussed many issues together. The main issue was service marketing and service quality and how people reveal service quality,” professor Donthu declares.
“A PHD is a beautiful thing for the training of future generations of business faculties. We have been working on this project for around six years. The way we have done this is exactly the same as we do in the US. Georgia State University has launched this programme for the first time in Georgia. Georgia State University is one of the largest independent business schools in the USA and we are ranking Dr. Lejava’s dissertation very highly,” Fazlolahi says.
CU has been cooperating with Georgia State University for a long time. From the very beginning it was exchanging BBA and MBA student. Another step of collaboration is the PHD programme.
“Service is a very important issue in every economy especially in developed countries. Measuring service quality is very important as companies need to know how to run competitively and gain success. In my dissertation’s defense I reasearched in more detail how companies should measure quality service and act accordingly,” says Dr. Boris Lejava, Dean of Caucasus School of Business (CSB).
“Quality estimating degrees of international standards has been implemented in Georgia recently. It was very welcome. But my work is based on estimations from customers viewpoints. The results of my reasearch can be used as recommendation for all companies that are oriented at customers,” Dr. Lejava declares.
For the first time in the history of CU graduates of Caucasus School of Law (CSL) and graduates of dual programmes were awarded diplomas.
Six students of CSB spent the first two years of their studying in Georgia and later moved to Georgia State University, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, in Atlanta. Accordingly dual diplomas of CSB and Georgia State University were awarded.
Discussion about this post