Ming D. Leung

mingdleung@berkeley.edu

University of California, Berkeley
Assistant Professor Management of Organizations, Haas School of Business

Professor Ming Leung is an economic sociologist and organizational theorist who studies how categories affects outcomes for market participants in innovative, contemporary labor market platforms. His research uses cognitive theories and categorization processes to develop an understanding of how hiring occurs in modern labor markets.

Theoretically, his contributions are focused on revealing how perceptual factors regarding category membership affect how market participants make evaluative decisions. He applies this cognitive perspective to theorize novel mechanisms of the labor market matching process, by conceptualizing social categories of job seekers, such as their race, gender, or country of origin, as cognitive constructs. Instead of examining who gets hired, he examines whether and why job applicants are hired.

He regularly works with and studies entrepreneurial companies that are at the forefront of technologically enabled labor markets, such as virtual freelancing platforms (Elance/oDesk/UpWork) and mobile gig-economy workers (Wonolo). He also works with more traditional companies (Google and Yahoo) on developing insight into how to potentially improve their hiring practices. He has also served as an expert witness on hiring issues. Before joining academia, he worked as a management consultant for Booz & Co, PWC, and Accenture.

Prof. Leung received his PhD from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He also holds an MBA from University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University.