David Ager

Director of Undergraduate Studies and
Lecturer on Sociology

Biographical Note

David Ager holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, a joint degree granted by Harvard Business School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. He is also a faculty member in Harvard Business School executive education program, Families in Business: From Generation to Generation and he teaches in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government executive education program, Leadership for a Networked World. Dr. Ager also serves as a faculty member in the Rockefeller Leadership Fellows Program at Dartmouth College.

Ager's research focuses on the leadership and organizational challenges that firms face as they conduct post-acquisition integration. He recently performed a three year intensive field study of the post-acquisition integration of three customer relationship management software development firms, whose operations were based in New England, the Silicon Valley, and Toronto, Canada. It proposes that even in situations where the cultures of the merging organizations are similar, actors may engage in what he labels an "avoid" dynamic that reinforces in-group and out-group differences, inhibiting integration. His study highlights the role of identity in shaping these post-acquisition integration outcomes. His dissertation contributes to a better understanding of the reasons why so many mergers and acquisitions fail. It also contributes to theories of social identity and theories about the role of emotions in economic life.

Ager has consulted and taught for several large multinational firms from different industries including finance, high-technology, hospitality, consumer products, bio-technology, bio-energy, telecommunications, and wholesale distribution. In addition, he has advised large, family controlled businesses around the world. His list of clients includes companies such as Mars, Inc., Rockefeller & Co., Inc., Caterpillar, and Morgan Stanley. His consulting activities include leadership development, strategic planning, talent management, change management, M&A, team building and succession planning.

Prior to coming to Harvard, Ager worked as an adviser to Cabinet Ministers in the Fisheries and Oceans and the Employment and Immigration portfolios of the Canadian government. He also served as a member of the finance organization at Nortel and as the Director of the Mexico Research Initiative at the Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario.

Ager holds an Honors B.Sc. in Economics and Human Biology from the University of Toronto, an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario and an A.M. in Sociology from Harvard University.

01/22/2012

Courses Offered This Academic Year

Sociology 97 ( Fall 2011 )	Tutorial in Sociological Theory	Catalog #5079
Sociology 97 ( Spring 2012 )	Tutorial in Sociological Theory	Catalog #5079
Sociology 109 ( Fall 2012 )	Leadership and Organizations	Catalog #8260
Sociology 159 ( Spring 2012 )	Social Entrepreneurship	Catalog #9611
Sociology 305 ( Fall 2011 )	Teaching Practicum	Catalog #0259

A Sampling of Courses Offered in Other Years

Sociology 25	Introduction to the Sociology of Organizations
Sociology 119	Learning from Social Settings: Observing and Talking to People
Sociology 98A	Using Qualitative Methods to Conduct Research in Organizations

Papers available in Portable Document Format (PDF)

The Emotional Impact and Behavioral Consequences of Post-M&A Integration: An Ethnographic Case Study in the Software Industry	Ager, David L	April 2011
Age, Audiences and Autonomy in the Dynamics of Organizational Prestige	David L. Ager, Mikolaj Jan Piskorski