In Memory of Andrew C. Wicks (1963–2025) Ruffin Professor of Business Administration and Richard M. Waitzer Bicentennial Professor of Ethics, University of Virginia Darden School of Business

Written by: Bidhan (Bobby) Parmar and Adrian Keevil

Andrew “Andy” Carpenter Wicks was a gifted teacher and a deeply reflective thinker, whose work helped reshape how we understand ethics in organizations—not as an abstract constraint, but as a lived practice of care, dialogue, and purpose. His passing in October 2025 leaves a profound absence in our field, yet his influence will continue to illuminate how scholars and practitioners alike pursue making business better.

Andy’s intellectual journey began at the University of Tennessee, where his early love of learning and leadership was evident—qualities later deepened through his graduate study in Religious Ethics at the University of Virginia. After teaching at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, Andy returned to UVA’s Darden School in 2002, where he became a central force in advancing the school’s mission to develop responsible leaders. At Darden, he directed the doctoral program, the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics, and the Institute for Business in Society, mentoring generations of students and scholars with equal parts rigor, humility, and humor.

Andy’s scholarly contributions transformed stakeholder theory and the broader conversation about the human-centered nature of business. His early work, “A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Stakeholder Concept” (with Dan Gilbert and Ed Freeman, 1994), expanded the stakeholder perspective to include the language of care, collaboration, and relational ethics. In “Organization Studies and the New Pragmatism” (with Ed Freeman, 1998), Andy called for moving beyond sterile debates between positivism and relativism, inviting scholars to embrace a pragmatic approach that was both empirically sound and ethically engaged.

His landmark paper with Tom Jones, “Convergent Stakeholder Theory” (1999), remains one of the most cited articles in Academy of Management Review, offering a bridge between normative and instrumental approaches to stakeholder thinking. In later work, such as “What Stakeholder Theory Is Not” (with Rob Phillips and Ed Freeman, 2003) and “Stakeholder Theory, Value, and Firm Performance” (with Jeff Harrison, 2013), Andy deepened that bridge into a robust philosophy of value creation—one grounded in trust, fairness, and the recognition that economic life is a shared moral project. His scholarship invited both scholars and managers to reconsider what it means to live and lead well.

Andy’s colleagues and students witnessed not only his powerful ideas but also his grace and generosity. He listened carefully, encouraged generously, and challenged kindly. He was the rare academic who seemed more interested in what others were learning than in his own reputation. Those who knew Andy personally will remember his laughter, his warmth, and the quiet courage with which he faced the last years of his life after being diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy. Even as his physical strength waned, his intellectual and spiritual presence deepened. His final book, “Ultimate Questions: A Stakeholder Guide to the Business of Your Life” (2025), distilled his life’s work into a profound invitation: to see our lives as enterprises of moral imagination and shared value. In it, as in his teaching, he offered a way to live with questions rather than rush to answers.

Andy’s life and work remind us that business ethics is ultimately about how we will live together. His scholarship provided conceptual clarity; his example provided moral clarity. Both will endure. As one of his students once wrote, “He made his own life-journey his ultimate question, and his walk, his answer.”

We hope that our SBE community will carry forward his torch, illuminating the path for others as he so selflessly did for so many of us.

Bidhan (Bobby) Parmar
Adrian Keevil