John-Paul Ferguson
Associate Professor; Academic Director, MBA Program
I am an Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour, and Academic Director of the MBA Program, in the Desautels Faculty of Management.
I am an organizational sociologist who studies work and employment. My recent work explores the rising trend in racial employment segregation between US workplaces. I combine archival data with geospatial statistics to explore how changes to the boundary of the firm have had disparate racial impacts on work and careers over the last generation.
In another line of research, I explore how discrimination among inventors leads to discrimination in what gets invented. We have explored for example how much of the increase in medical innovation targeting women’s health is directly traceable to growing numbers of women biomedical researchers.
I am a trained bicycle mechanic. When not working, I can be found building bikes and riding them as far as my legs (and my gut) will take me.
I mentor because I was mentored, and the first rule of academia is—or should be—to pay it forward. We’re never clear enough about the unspoken rules of the university. If I can help with that, I’m doing my mentors proud.