People

“I’m constantly inspired to look into new research angles by the brilliant people I run into on campus every day.”

Patrick Ferguson (he/him) has always been inclined to combine interests that might not seem compatible at first glance. During his undergraduate career at the University of Melbourne, he received a B.A. in English and History, and a B.Com in Economics and Finance. After graduation, he joined a sports analytics consulting group, where he helped professional sports teams identify undervalued players. His next position—as an accounting research assistant at his alma mater—brought these threads together. The senior faculty members Patrick worked alongside tackled similar issues related to performance metrics, but framed as accounting problems. “I’ve always been interested in approaching traditional accounting questions in non-traditional contexts,” he says. “This way of thinking fits right in at HBS.”

As a doctoral candidate in Accounting and Management, Patrick has been encouraged by his faculty advisors to pursue unconventional lines of inquiry. “I was a little nervous about studying general managerial accounting questions in a sports context, but my advisors, Professors Dennis Campbell and Karim Lakhani, pushed me to follow my passion,” Patrick recalls. “I’ve never gotten the sense from any of my advisors that I should play it safe or do work that’s similar to what others are researching.”

For Patrick, HBS is ideally suited to combining his diverse interests thanks to the collegial, interdisciplinary community that includes industry leaders, faculty, staff, doctoral and MBA students. “HBS sits at the intersection of academic management research and the business world,” he explains. “I’m constantly inspired to look into new research angles by the brilliant people I run into on campus every day.”

Research

Patrick’s research interests span a range of topics related to performance measurement and evaluation. He is interested in how and why firms use performance metrics for contracting and feedback purposes, as well as the limitations of quantitative metrics and the role of human judgment in hiring and assessing workers. He is also looking at the factors that influence the attendance and consumption of sports, investigating the validity of the assumption that uncertainty of outcome is the primary draw for fans. Patrick sees broad applicability to his research beyond the fields of management and sports. “Ultimately,” he says, “our work is about human behavior and social interactions, seen through the context of economics and management.”