Oliver Williams

  • Professor Emeritus
  • Management & Organization

Biography

Oliver Williams, C.S.C. specializes in the areas of business ethics, corporate governance, and Catholic social teaching. Williams is the editor or author of 29 books as well as numerous articles on business ethics in journals. He is the Director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Religious Values in Business in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. A former Naval Officer, Williams earned his doctorate from Vanderbilt University and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Notre Dame. He had a post-doctoral year at the Stanford University School of Business. He served as Associate Provost of the University of Notre Dame from 1987-94 and is a past chair of the Social Issues Division of the Academy of Management. He was elected as a Professor Extraordinary at Stellenbosch University in South Africa in 2014 and continues that position. In 2006, he was appointed a member of the five-person Board of Directors at the United Nations Global Compact Foundation. The United Nations Global Compact is the world’s largest voluntary corporate citizenship initiative with over20,000 businesses around the world as members. In 2019 he was presented with the SUMNER MARCUS Award from the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management "in recognition and appreciation for your outstanding contribution of service and scholarship to the field". In 2020 he was selected as a Pioneer in Business Ethics, a project designed to preserve the history of the academic discipline; a video record is available at the library of the University of Illinois. Williams is a priest in the Congregation of Holy Cross.