Gerald F. Davis

"This study compares the agency theory of the firm with interorganizational theory in examining the factors associated with the adoption of the poison pill-a takeover defense issued by a firms board of directors that can dramatically increase the cost that a hostile buyer would have to pay to acquire the firm-by a panel of Fortune 500 firms between July 1984 and August 1989. The pills rapid spread is traced to a combination of ownership structure and other firm-level factors and an interlock network diffusion process. The results support a social structural perspective on the market for corporate control in which the interlock network provides a social context favoring continued managerial dominance. The findings are also more consistent with models of cohesion rather than structural equivalence as the social structural mechanism responsible for diffusion."

"Davis’s research is broadly concerned with the effects of finance on society. Recent writings examine how ideas about corporate social responsibility have evolved to meet changes in the structures and geographic footprint of multinational corporations; whether "shareholder capitalism" is still a viable model for economic development; how income inequality in an economy is related to corporate size and structure; why theories about organizations do (or do not) progress; how architecture shapes social networks and innovation in organizations; why stock markets spread to some countries and not others; and whether there exist viable organizational alternatives to shareholder-owned corporations in the United States."