Nickerson was the Frahm Family Professor of Organization and Strategy (Emeritus) in Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

[3] Melbourne Business School appointed Jackson Nickerson the 2023 Sir Donald Hibberd Lecturer speaking on the sources and prevention of industrial catastrophes.

[5] Nickerson's early research built upon Oliver Williamson’s transaction cost economics to predict the antecedents and performance consequences of organizational choices in a wide variety of empirical settings and industries.

Along with Todd Zenger, he introduced the concepts of organizational vacillation and envy as foundations for firm boundaries and is credited with introducing the Problem-Finding and Problem-Solving Perspective, which provides a knowledge-based foundation for a theory of firm boundaries, organizational choice, entrepreneurship, and the design of group processes to overcome biases.

In 2019, Nickerson received the Strategic Management Society's Educational Impact Award and, in a video, described the differences between pedagogy, andragogy, and mbagogy.