Faculty Spotlight: Ryan Lamare, Associate Professor, MHRIR
Ryan Lamare has been with LER since 2015 and explained his journey to finding his home with LER as anything but traditional. In 2008 Ryan finished his Ph.D. in Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell and jumped into the job market thinking it would be a manageable and somewhat straight forward process, but soon realized it was a competitive market and he would need to fight for his place within an organization. The job search took Ryan abroad as he landed a few early-career academic positions in different countries, including Ireland and the United Kingdom. Upon returning to the states Ryan accepted a position in Washington D.C. that involved working with employment policy. After a pit stop at Penn State, Ryan started his tenure at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with the LER program. He currently teaches Workplace Dispute Resolution, Collective Bargaining, IR Theory, and Game Theory and HR Strategy on campus, and Human Resources Management and Strategy online.
The main research areas that Ryan focuses on are conflict resolution (employment mediation and arbitration, and organizational strategies toward workplace disputes) and how workplace voice mechanisms contribute to political democracy. His time in Washington working with workforce policy awakened this area of research interest. A common theme or practice Ryan utilizes within both of these areas of interest is game theory and how that can relate to HR. If you have never heard of game theory, Ryan explains it as a series of tools to assist with identifying, understanding, and resolving a problem or question strategically. In other words, it assists with exploring various solutions in order to identify the best response possible to any given problem or scenario. The goal behind it is to ensure that individuals are making a more conscious effort to resolving problems that may arise.
Ryan enjoys teaching both face-to-face and online, and when asked to identify the strengths of online learning he mentioned how case studies, simulations, and games can be more easily structured to ensure anonymity and privacy online. This assists with eliminating potential issues due to students overhearing other groups’ strategies throughout the process.
If you enjoy being in an innovative learning environment and utilizing hot topics and current events to understand theory and apply it to practice, you will enjoy taking one of Ryan’s courses.
