An endowed professorship is a prestigious faculty position permanently funded by a donation. Endowed faculty positions strengthen Boise State, benefit important research and create countless opportunities for students. But who are these endowed professors, and what are their plans for helping students thrive?
Justin Ames, associate professor in the Department of Management, was recently seated as the Robert V. Hansberger Endowed Chair in Business Ethics, a five-year appointment. A gift from the Hansberger family established the position to continue Robert V. Hansberger’s legacy as a visionary Idaho businessman and strong proponent of ethical business practices.
We sat down with Ames to discuss his teaching strategies and research.
Q: What does your research focus on?
A: My research focuses on phenomena that predict or moderate ethical and responsible leadership behaviors. In other words, what things make it more or less likely that a leader responds to ethically intensive situations responsibly. This can be anything from individual-level constructs like stress, role-identity conflict and narcissism, to organizational constructs like agility, visioning and meaning-making at work.
I have a very personal interest in trying to understand the moment when business professionals face an ethical dilemma at work and it seems the only way out is to compromise what they think is right. How can we help someone navigate that situation with their integrity intact and still have a successful career?
As the ethics chair, my goal is to bridge academic theory with practice. Ethical behavior is easy to talk about but very hard to do in certain business situations. That’s what I love about this endowment. It supports efforts to train future business leaders and also affords the opportunity to bring industry professionals back into our hallways to learn about the latest scientific insights in managing tough stakeholder trade-offs. It gives me access to a real life laboratory in which I’m able to facilitate (and study) the application of ethical theory into practice, which is the heart of what I like to research.
Q: How has the gift from the Robert V. Hansberger family impacted your work?
A: I spent 15 years in industry before becoming an academic. Many of the best performing companies were ones that understood their impact on key stakeholders and leaned into co-creating value with them. When customers, employees and community partners trust a business to treat them fairly, then a business can reach a better form of flourishing — one where shareholders can be rewarded with healthy and sustainable growth because the ecosystem in which they operate is flourishing too.
From what I’ve learned about Robert Hansberger, he embodied this business philosophy. The Hansberger Chair affords me the time, flexibility, and resources to engage in training students and industry leaders on this very topic.
Q: How do you plan to help students develop the skills needed for today’s complex business world?
A: In the classroom, it’s about reframing ethics education as a skill-building process instead of an abstract philosophical exercise. My courses are not ethics survey courses where you brush over a variety of different concepts, memorize them and move on. My classes are about building a skill set. This takes practice.
First, we make sure students understand the theory enough to recognize and address ethical situations and dilemmas. From there, we go to the “ethics gym” where they can hit the mat and practice the moves. With enough practice, they learn how to recognize a complex ethical situation, break it down and — importantly — have the confidence to keep everything in perspective and navigate their way out of it.
This is where the College of Business and Economics‘ ever-growing partnership with local industry leaders makes a difference. When you bring in industry leaders to mentor students, you’re exposing students to a greater variety of situations and building a breadth of experience.
Q: Looking ahead, what is your vision for this endowed position?
A: In the future, the Hansberger Chair will sponsor initiatives that facilitate the translation of research from our top notch faculty to industry practitioners. We’ll accomplish this through events and targeted dissemination outlets. We will also sponsor events where students can practice and sharpen their ethical decision-making through advanced curriculum and case competition. Finally, we plan to find ways to bring more industry leaders in to mentor students. Leaning on industry experience, the students can better learn what tough ethical situations they might face in their careers.