Jerry Davis

Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor of Business Administration
Professor of Management and Organizations

Education
PhD Stanford University 1990
MA Stanford University 1987
BA University of Michigan 1984
Biography

Jerry Davis is the Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor of Business Administration at the Ross School of Business and Professor of Sociology, The University of Michigan. Davis received his PhD from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. His books include Social Movements and Organization Theory (with Doug McAdam, W. Richard Scott, and Mayer N. Zald; Cambridge University Press, 2005), Organizations and Organizing: Rational, Natural, and Open System Perspectives (with W. Richard Scott; Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007), Managed By the Markets: How Finance Reshaped America (Oxford University Press, 2009), Changing your Company from the Inside Out: A Guide for Social Intrapreneurs (with Chris White, Harvard Business Review Press, 2015), and The Vanishing American Corporation: Navigating the Hazards of a New Economy (Berrett-Koehler, 2016). His latest book is Taming Corporate Power in the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Davis has published dozens of articles in management, sociology, and finance.

Davis is Faculty Director of Business+Impact and oversees the +Impact Studio, co-teaching its award-winning course on designing equitable enterprises for a just energy transition.

Davis’s research is broadly concerned with the corporation as a social and economic vehicle. Recent writings examine why corporations have so little insight into their global supply chains and the moral dilemmas this poses; why the social network of corporate elites has fallen apart; what organizational alternative exist to the shareholder-owned corporation; how national institutions shape corporate structures, and what this means for income inequality; how platform capitalism might be tamed to meet human needs other than profit; how management research might help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals; how new technologies have enabled worker political activism within the corporation; how social scientists can inform public opinion; and how information and communication technologies have enabled entirely new designs for economic organization.

Latest Faculty News & Research
Featured Books
Changing Your Company From the Inside Out: A Field Guide for Social Entrepreneurs
Gerald F. Davis and Christopher J. White
You’re ambitious. You’re not afraid to take risks. You want to bring about positive social change. And while your peers have left a trail of failed start-ups in their wake, you want to initiate change from within an established company, where you can have a more far-reaching, even global impact. Welcome to the club—you’re a social intrapreneur. But even with your enviable skill set, your...
Organization theory and the dilemmas of a post-corporate economy
Authors
Davis, G
Published Date
2017
Authors
Davis, G
Source
Research in the Sociology of Organizations
Volume
48B
Issue
1
Pages
311-322
Taming Corporate Power in the 21st Century
Authors
Davis, G
Published Date
04/2022
Authors
Davis, G
Source
Cambridge University Press
1009095420
The Vanishing American Corporation: Navigating the Hazards of a New Economy
Authors
Davis, G.
Published Date
05/2016
Authors
Davis, G.
Source
Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler
9781626562790
Changing your company from the inside out: A guide for social intrapreneurs
Authors
Davis, G and White, C
Published Date
03/2015
Authors
Davis, G and White, C
Source
Harvard Business Review Press
Managed by the Markets: How Finance Reshaped America.
Authors
Gerald Davis
Published Date
2009
Authors
Gerald Davis
Source
Oxford University Press
Business School Leadership and Crisis Exit Planning
Authors
Davis, G, McKiernan, P, and Tsui, A
Published Date
05/2022
Authors
Davis, G, McKiernan, P, and Tsui, A
Source
Cambridge University Press
Pages
71-90
Multi- and interdisciplinary research in a world of crisis: A responsible research solution
Cornuel, E
Capitalism Beyond Mutuality? Perspectives Integrating Philosophy and Social Science
Authors
Davis, G, and Shibulal, S
Published Date
07/2018
Authors
Davis, G, and Shibulal, S
Source
Oxford: Oxford University Press
Pages
207-226
Taming platform capitalism to meet human needs
Subramanian Rangan
The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, 2nd edition
Authors
Davis. G
Published Date
2017
Authors
Davis. G
Source
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Pages
722-737
How institutions create income inequality
Royston Greenwood, Christine Oliver, Thomas B. Lawrence, and Renate E. Meyer