[8] From 1964 to 1970, March joined the faculty at the University of California, Irvine as the founding Dean of the School of Social Sciences (1964–69).

He had also served as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution (1978–1987) and the founding director of the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (Scancor) (1989–1999).

As a core member of the Carnegie School, he collaborated with the cognitive psychologist Herbert A. Simon on several works on organization theory.

[citation needed] In 1972, March worked together with Johan Olsen and Michael D. Cohen on the systemic-anarchic perspective of organizational decision making known as the Garbage Can Model.

[16] The scope of his academic work was broad but focused on understanding how decisions happen in individuals, groups, organizations, companies and society.