The Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation awarded Bentley University Professor of Management Joseph Weiss with a 2010 Marion and Jasper Whiting Fellowship. Weiss, who is one of only 20 recipients, will use the funding for research that explores the ethics, values and career prospects of emerging Russian professionals and entrepreneurs.

"As a major emerging economy, Russia's next generation of business and government professionals will play important roles in developing that society and contributing to the global market," Weiss notes. "Their experiences, perceptions, and values of work, success, and ethics will shape the next stage of Russia's cultural evolution."

Weiss will collaborate with the Career Center of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and the Association of Young Entrepreneurs in Moscow. His research will include surveys and interviews of recent graduates of Moscow State Institute, professors, and career specialists to identify: postgraduates' career prospects and strategies; factors that graduates experience that may help and/or impede their career aspirations and decisions; and graduates' values and ethics toward work, success, and achievement. The project builds upon preliminary research that Weiss began in December 2009 with Oleg Rykhtikov, a recent Ph.D. graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

"I'm also interested in discovering what worked and what could be changed in graduates' educational, work experiences, and values to better prepare them for careers in Russia and internationally," he says.

Research findings will benefit the Moscow State Institute's career center and other universities in Russia, and more broadly, those who teach and conduct research in careers, leadership, and business ethics. The pedagogical goal of the project, Weiss notes, is to use findings to teach what does not currently exist in research literature, such as the personal, institutional, and external factors that influence, facilitate, and impede career decisions and choices of Russian graduates.

"A professional calling of mine is to help students, through my teaching, examine their values as they think through career choices," says Weiss, who is a research fellow at the Center of Business Ethics at Bentley University.

Weiss is author of numerous books and has published several refereed articles in the areas of management of technology and high-technology organizational cultures. He received an Innovative Teaching Award from Bentley University and a Teaching Excellence Award from the national Organizational Behavior Teaching Society. He has served as a Fulbright program specialist and was elected to the National Academy of Management's Consulting Division. Weiss has consulted with several firms in the areas of leadership development, team alignment and career advising.