Nicole Woolsey Biggart
Professor of Management
Research Expertise: Organizational theory, management of innovation, economic and organizational sociology, firm networks, industrial change, social bases of technology adoption
Nicole Woolsey Biggart joined the Graduate School of Management in 1981 as one of the School’s first faculty members. In June 2010, she assumed the Chevron Chair in Energy Efficiency, which directs the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center. BIggart served as the School’s dean from 2003 to 2009. She held the Jerome J. and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Management from 2002 to 2010.
Biggart is an expert in organizational theory and management of innovation. Her research interests include economic and organizational sociology, firm networks, industrial change and social bases of technology adoption. The author of seven books or book-length reports, she has also written more than 30 articles and chapters and numerous book reviews, and is a frequent presenter at international meetings.
She has held leadership positions in the Academy of Management, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and the American Sociological Association, and has served on the editorial boards of several professional journals. She has received the faculty pioneer award for sustainability in management education from the Aspen Institute and the Sacramento Business Journal has honored her with the Women Who Mean Business Award.
Biggart has studied a wide array of sectors, organizations and markets around the world, including research on the auto industries of South Korea, Taiwan, Spain and Argentina; the U.S. commercial building industry; Japanese management strategies in the U.S.; management and organization in the Far East; organizational explanations for scandals in the White House; organizational change in the U.S. Post Office; the sociology of labor and leisure; and the direct sales market. She is an expert in the formation of business clusters.
She currently serves on the scientific advisory board for the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany.
Biggart has served on the editorial board of Comstock’s business magazine and on the board of Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance, a nonprofit supporting entrepreneurial programs, companies and technology investment throughout the region. She is a member of the Business Development/Entrepreneurship Action Team of Partnership for Prosperity, a diverse group of stakeholders that is building a business plan for the Sacramento region that leverages its unique strengths and market opportunities. Biggart also represented UC Davis on the Bay Area Council, a business-sponsored, public-policy advocacy organization for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.
Room 3320
Post-crisis: A Call for New System of Global Governance
Faculty News & Research
Professor Nicole Biggart, director of the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center, was among 30 distinguished scholars and policy makers attending the first Globalization TrendLab Conference at The Wharton School in April. Their objective: a multidisciplinary inquiry into some of society’s most pressing systemic disruptions.
Using the financial crisis as a launching pad, the group discussed the housing bubble, debating whether the crisis stemmed from bad policies and misguided regulations, or whether deeper institutional change and new financial instruments are necessary.
Awards
Energy Efficiency: The First Line of Defense
To enhance U.S. energy security, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and strengthen the economy, the Obama administration has made clean and renewable energy a top priority. But most of the payoff for that investment will be over the long term. Energy efficiency is the fastest, cheapest and cleanest solution to implement now.
Why Aren’t More Commercial Buildings Going Green?
Professor Nicole Biggart presented her research on the topic in her talk “Where Are the Green Buildings?” at a seminar for engineering, sociology and transportation scholars hosted by the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center in February.
Shaping the Future at Milken Institute
Professor Nicole Woolsey Biggart, director of the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center, spoke on “Energy Efficiency: The First Line of Defense” at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in May.
Honor System a Success for Area Businesses
The idea that products and services cost a fixed price is a relatively new phenomenon, said Nicole Biggart, an economic sociologist and professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management.
A Good Excuse to Touch Base
Nicole Biggart, professor at UC Davis’ Graduate School of Management, says separate spheres of ideology in the workplace arose with industrialization and was a way of ensuring the employer got full attention. But new studies are showing that engagement can stimulate the workplace, “We want full engagement of the workers’ emotions on the job, their whole person, not just hands and backs. So, work as family and friends,” said Biggart.
Roots of Energy Efficiency
Professor Nicole Woolsey Biggart, who holds the Chevron Chair in Energy Efficiency, participated in a roundtable discussion on “California’s Smart Energy Investments: Enabling the Next Generation of Energy Efficiency.” View a video of the event, which was moderated by Professor Andrew Hargadon.
Professor Biggart Appointed to Chevron Energy-efficiency Chair
Professor Nicole Woolsey Biggart has been appointed to the Chevron Chair in Energy Efficiency. She will direct the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center, which promotes commercialization of energy-efficiency technologies, teaches future leaders in energy efficiency and conducts policy-supporting research. “Energy efficiency is by far the most effective and least expensive new fuel,” Biggart said.
Professor Nicole W. Biggart Named Chevron Chair in Energy Efficiency
UC Davis announced the appointment of Professor Nicole Woolsey Biggart to the Chevron Chair in Energy Efficiency. The Chevron Chair directs the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center in its mission to accelerate the commercialization of energy-efficiency technologies, teach future leaders in energy efficiency and conduct critical policy-supporting research.
Innovative Energy Technologies Slow to Penetrate Commercial Sector
Professor Nicole Woolsey Biggart discusses her findings from a UC Davis study about why innovative energy technologies are having trouble penetrating the commercial sector in this video interview at the 2010 Energy Efficiency Global Forum and Exposition in Washington, D.C. in May.
Bold Call for “STIM-NOVATION” in the Obama Administration
As President-elect Obama shapes his ideas and package to stimulate the economy, Dean Nicole Woolsey Biggart traveled to Washington D.C.
Power Corrupts, But How?
This past summer Professor Donald Palmer presented his research on organizational wrongdoing in a talk titled “Power Corrupts, But How?: An Analysis of Enron’s Illegal Special Purpose Entities” at Cornell University’s Johnson School and at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Using Enron as a case study, Palmer argued that corporate malfeasance occurs within a specific organizational context where wrongdoers are enabled to build both formal and informal power relations that allow them to obtain cooperation and overcome resistance from other organizational participants.
Dean Honored with Aspen Institute’s 2008 Faculty Pioneer Award
Dean Nicole Woolsey Biggart has been awarded the Aspen Institute’s Center for Business Education’s 2008 Faculty Pioneer Award for Institutional Impact. The annual recognition, dubbed the “Oscars of the business school world” by the Financial Times, celebrates MBA faculty who have demonstrated leadership and risk-taking in integrating social and environment issues into academic research, educational programs and business practice.
Graduate School of Management Dean to Step Down
Dean Nicole Woolsey Biggart will step down from her administrative post next July. Following a sabbatical, she will return to full-time teaching and research. Biggart began her term as dean “with several aspirations. I am pleased that we have achieved substantial progress toward these goals in the past five years.”
Teaching Innovation Management in Sardinia
Dean Nicole Woolsey Biggart travelled to the island of Sardinia from April 5-11 to teach a short course on managing innovation at the Associazione Istituzione Libera Università Nuorese (AILUN). It was the eighth time Biggart has joined other top international scholars to teach in AILUN’s International Masters of Organizational Science program. The nine-month curriculum is built around special lectures by prominent faculty in sociology, psychology, economics and business.
Building Better Frameworks to Study Market Behavior
Dean Nicole Woolsey Biggart presented her research on market regimes at the Conference on Capitalism and Entrepreneurship hosted by Cornell University’s Center for the Study of Economy and Society. The two-day conference last September featured world renowned researchers and experts in economics and sociology from universities in Denmark, Sweden, France and the U.S. Biggart presented a paper titled “Markets as Regimes: Explaining Change and Stability, Competition and Consensus in Economic Orders,” which she co-authored with Associate Professor Thomas D.
Women in Business
Featuring Dean Nicole Woolsey Biggart and Mary Wiberg, executive director of the California Commission on the Status of Women.
Nicole Biggart Named Dean of UC Davis Graduate School of Management
Professor Nicole Woolsey Biggart, holder of the Jerome J. and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Management at the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management, has been appointed dean of the School effective July 1, 2003.