O.C. Ferrell is The James T. Pursell Sr. Eminent Scholar in Ethics and Director of the Center for Ethical Organizational Cultures, Auburn University. He served as the Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Belmont University and University Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the Anderson School of Management at University of New Mexico. He has also been on the faculties of the University of Wyoming, Colorado State University, University of Memphis, Texas A&M University, Illinois State University and Southern Illinois University. He received his PhD in marketing from Louisiana State University.

He is past president of the Academic Council of the American Marketing Association, and he chaired the American Marketing Association Ethics Committee. Under his leadership, the committee developed the AMA Code of Ethics and the AMA Code of Ethics for Marketing on the Internet. In addition, he is a former member of the Academy of Marketing Science Board of Governors and is a Society of Marketing Advances and Southwestern Marketing Association Fellow and an Academy of Marketing Science Distinguished Fellow. He was the vice president of publications and is president of the Academy of Marketing Science. He was the first recipient of the Marketing Education Innovation Award from the Marketing Management Association. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Macromarketing Society and a special award for service to doctoral students from the Southeast Doctoral Consortium. He received the Harold Berkman Lifetime Service Award from the Academy of Marketing Science and, more recently, the Cutco/Vector Distinguished Marketing Educator Award. Dr.

Ferrell is the co-author of 20 books and more than 100 published articles and papers. His articles have been published in the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Business Ethics and the Journal of Business Research as well as other journals.