Nicole Woolsey Biggart
Professor of Management
Course Taught: Strategic Innovations in Energy Efficiency
Degrees
- Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
- M.A., University of California, Davis
- B.A., Simmons College | Boston, Mass.
Research Expertise: Organizational theory, management of innovation, economic and organizational sociology, firm networks, industrial change, social bases of technology adoption
Fast Facts
- One of the School’s founding faculty members, and an alumna of UC Davis
- Influential in shaping the School’s community, values and learning environment through her teaching and leadership—including six years as the immediate past dean
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, and 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. Author of seven books or book-length reports, she has also written more than 30 articles and book chapters, and numerous book reviews. She is a frequent presenter at international meetings.
In her research, Biggart 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.
Biggart has served on the editorial boards of of several professional journals as well as 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. She currently serves on the scientific advisory board for the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany.
She has held leadership positions in the Academy of Management, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and the American Sociological Association. Biggart has also 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.
Room 3320
Honda Smart Home to Demonstrate Zero-Carbon Living and Mobility at UC Davis
Green Living: Professor Nicole Biggart joined executives from American Honda Motor to break ground on the Honda Smart Home at UC Davis, a showcase for environmental innovation and
renewable energy enabling technologies.
Obstacles to Innovation
Move Beyond the “Rule of Thumb”
Professor of Management Nicole Biggart studies organizational theory, management of innovation, and economic and organizational sociology. In this blog, she discusses obstacles to innovation in Network Production Organizations.
Nicole Woolsey Biggart
Professor of Management / Chevron Chair in Energy Efficiency / Director, UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center Dean, 2003–09 / Jerome J. and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Management, 2002–10
Fire, Ready, Aim: When Is Your Business/Product ‘Perfect Enough’ to Go to Market?
Mark Zuckerburg’s management of Facebook’s evolution is a good illustration of one of the dilemmas of being an innovator: when and how do you go to market? This article quotes Professor Nicole Biggart about the difference trial markets can make before a product launch.
Readings in Economic Sociology
Wiley-Blackwell, 2002
Sociologists have rightfully claimed economy and economic activity as areas for their legitimate analysis. Edited by Professor Nicole Biggart, these articles, over thirty in total, reflect the best and latest thought in the exciting field of economic sociology. Beginning with the foundation of Smith, Marx, Engels, and Polanyi, the volume gathers some of the best writings by economic sociologists that consider national and world economies as both products and influences of society.
Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in America
University Of Chicago Press, 1990
Tupperware Home Parties, Shaklee Corporation, Amway, Mary Kay Cosmetics—theirs is an approach to business that violates many of the basic tenets of modern American commerce. Yet these direct selling organizations, fashioned by charismatic leaders and built upon devoted armies of door-to-door representatives, have grown to constitute an $8.5 billion a year industry and provide a livelihood for more than 5 million workers, the vast majority of them women.
The Role of Social Heuristics in Project-centred Production Networks: Insights from the Commercial Construction Industry
Engineering Project Organization Journal, 2012
Project production networks or PPNs are now the primary means for organizing in many industries including fashion design and manufacturing, moviemaking and construction projects. PPNs enable professionally and geographically distributed participants of a common project to bring their expertise and resources together to achieve an economically and technically superior product than a single firm could produce.
Nicole Woolsey Biggart 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.
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.
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.
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. in December to participate in a high-level, day-long conference titled “How Will the Obama Administration and New Congress Support Innovation amid an Economic Crisis?”
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 recently 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.
Women in Business
Featuring Dean Nicole Woolsey Biggart and Mary Wiberg, executive director of the California Commission on the Status of Women.
Systems of Exchange
The Academy of Management Review, 2004
In this study, Professor Nicole Biggart and co-author Rick Delbridge of Cardiff University (UK) develop a classification scheme of systems of exchange using concepts from network analysis, economics, and cultural sociology. This classification illustrates that the “free market” is but one possible type of economy and that other types are not best understood as imperfections.
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.