Jeffrey Pfeffer | |
---|---|
Born | St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. | July 23, 1946
Education | Webb School of California |
Alma mater | Carnegie-Mellon University Stanford University |
Occupation | Academic |
Employer | Stanford Graduate School of Business |
Jeffrey Pfeffer (born July 23, 1946, St. Louis, Missouri) is an American business theorist and the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and is considered one of today's most influential management thinkers. [1] [2]
Pfeffer graduated high school from the Webb School of California. He received his BS and MS degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University and his PhD from Stanford University. He began his career at the business school at the University of Illinois and then taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1973 to 1979.
Pfeffer has given talks in 39 countries around the world and has taught management seminars for numerous companies and associations in the United States including Sutter Health, the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, John Hancock, Hewlett-Packard, and the Online Publishers Association now called Digital Content Next (DCN).
Pfeffer has served on the boards of several human capital management companies including Resumix, Unicru, and Workstream. He also served on the board of publicly traded Sonosite (SONO) for ten years and on the boards of private high-technology companies Actify and Audible Magic. He is currently on the board of directors of the nonprofit, Quantum Leap Healthcare, as well as on the advisory boards of several private companies.
Pfeffer has won numerous awards for his articles and books. He was elected a fellow of the Academy of Management more than 25 years ago, was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, won the Richard D. Irwin award for scholarly contributions to management, is in the Thinker's 50 Hall of Fame, and in 2011, was awarded an honorary doctorate from Tilburg University in The Netherlands.
Pfeffer formalized the study of resource dependence theory in his text The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence-Perspective, which he co-authored with Jerry Salancik.
Pfeffer has done theoretical and empirical research on the subjects of human resource management, power and politics in organizations, evidence-based management, the knowing-doing gap, leadership, stratification and labor markets inside organizations, the sociology of science, how and why theories become self-fulfilling, the psychological relationship between time and money, and economic evaluation.
Pfeffer has also been recognised for writing case studies, and was listed among the top 40 case authors published by The Case Centre in 2016. He was ranked 25th in 2015/16. [3]
Pfeffer has taught both elective and core classes in human resource management and the core course in organizational behavior. When he joined the Stanford faculty, he developed an elective on power in organizations. First called Power and Politics in Organizations, some years ago the class was retitled The Paths to Power. The elective has been consistently popular, with Pfeffer teaching two sections per year and, over the years, other colleagues teaching sections as well.
In an interview, Pfeffer discussed the rules of power. "I would define power as the ability to get things done your way in contested situations," Pfeffer stated. [4] Power is getting your way in situations. There are different sources of power. Power can come from social relationships. [4] How you present yourself can also be a source of power. [4] Speaking confidently can show power, and dressing powerfully. [4] The way you brand yourself can also be a source of power. The reputation you have will help your brand. [4]
Pfeffer discusses "Evidence-Based Management" in the Harvard Business Review. This is a form of managing where ideas are presented to managers who in turn asks the team to show them evidence that their ideas works. [5] This keeps managers from making decisions without having the right information to make a decision. [5] This strategy that Pfeffer talks about can help managers learn what works and what does not work. [5]
Pfeffer has written more than 150 articles and book chapters. He is the author of 15 books including The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First, Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action, Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management, What Were They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom About Management, and Power: Why Some People Have It—And Others Don't, published and released in September 2010. [6] Pfeffer's book, entitled Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time, was published in 2015 by HarperBusiness. His latest book “Dying for a Paycheck” analyzes workplace practices that are detrimental to employees’ health. He estimates that such practices cause 120,000 excess deaths per year in the USA, about half of which might be preventable.
Pfeffer has written cases on how individuals acquire power and manage their careers, including cases on Keith Ferrazzi, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Ross Walker, Amir Dan Rubin, Zia Yusuf, and Laura Esserman. Based on his research and that of others he advises people wanting to advance their careers to "share perceptions" of their work and to encourage others to "sing their praises". [7] He has also written cases on companies that practice high commitment/high performance work arrangements, including Southwest Airlines, DaVita Inc., the Men's Wearhouse, Holy Cross Hospital, SAS Institute, and the Andean region of Kimberly-Clark.
For five years, Pfeffer wrote a monthly column for the Time-Warner magazine, Business 2.0. For almost three years, he wrote a career advice column for Capital, the leading economics and business magazine in Turkey. He currently [ when? ] writes an online column about twice a month for Fortune .
On their 2016 album Who Has The Time, Tulsa, Oklahoma band The Earslips released a song titled "Jeffrey Pfeffer's Wikipedia Article Summary." The lyrics are the lines from the first paragraph of the English Wikipedia article about him. [9]
Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any other entity, pays the other, the employee, in return for carrying out assigned work. Employees work in return for wages, which can be paid on the basis of an hourly rate, by piecework or an annual salary, depending on the type of work an employee does, the prevailing conditions of the sector and the bargaining power between the parties. Employees in some sectors may receive gratuities, bonus payments or stock options. In some types of employment, employees may receive benefits in addition to payment. Benefits may include health insurance, housing, and disability insurance. Employment is typically governed by employment laws, organization or legal contracts.
Organizational behavior or organisational behaviour is the "study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself". Organizational behavioral research can be categorized in at least three ways:
Organizational effectiveness is a concept organizations use to gauge how effective they are at reaching intended outcomes. Organizational effectiveness is both powerful and problematic term. The strength of it is that it may be used to critically evaluate and improve organisational activities. It is problematic since it means various things to different individuals. And there are other alternative methods for measuring organizational performance. Organizational effectiveness embodies the degree to which firms achieve the goals they have decided upon, a question that draws on several different factors. Among those are talent management, leadership development, organization design and structure, design of measurements and scorecards, implementation of change and transformation, deploying smart processes and smart technology to manage the firm's human capital and the formulation of the broader Human Resources agenda.
Evidence-based management (EBMgt) is an emerging movement to explicitly use the current, best evidence in management and decision-making. It is part of the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.
Robert I. Sutton is a professor of management science at the Stanford University School of Engineering and a researcher in the field of evidence-based management. He is a New York Times best-selling author.
Financial intelligence is a type of business intelligence constituted of the knowledge and skills gained from understanding finance and accounting principles in the business world and understanding how money is being used. Although a fairly new term, financial intelligence has its roots in organizational development research, mostly in the field of employee participation. Financial intelligence has emerged as a best practice and core competency in many organizations leading to improved financial results, increased employee morale, and reduced employee turnover. Many organizations include financial intelligence programs in their leadership development curriculum. Financial intelligence is not an innate skill, rather it is a learned set of skills that can be developed at all levels.
Geoffrey P. Chamberlain's theory of strategy was first published in 2010. The theory draws on the work of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Kenneth R. Andrews, Henry Mintzberg and James Brian Quinn but is more specific and attempts to cover the main areas they did not address. Chamberlain analyzes the strategy construct by treating it as a combination of four factors.
Human resource planning is a process that identifies current and future human resources needs for an organization to achieve its goals. Human resource planning should serve as a link between human resource management and the overall strategic plan of an organization. Ageing workers population in most western countries and growing demands for qualified workers in developing economies have underscored the importance of effective human resource planning.
Resource dependence theory is the study of how the external resources of an organization affect the behavior of the organization. The procurement of external resources is an important tenet of both the strategic and tactical management of any company. Nevertheless, a theory of the consequences of this importance was not formalized until the 1970s, with the publication of The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective . Resource dependence theory has implications regarding the optimal divisional structure of organizations, recruitment of board members and employees, production strategies, contract structure, external organizational links, and many other aspects of organizational strategy.
Mikołaj Jan Piskorski who often goes by Misiek is Dean of Executive Education at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is known for his research in the area of digital transformation, on-line social platforms and study of how companies leverage social platforms to improve their profitability.
High-commitment management is a management approach that emphasizes the personal responsibility, independence, and empowerment of employees across all levels of an organization instead of focusing on higher-level authority employees. It intends to keep commitment at a high level by preserving initiative with management personnel.
Resource slack, in the business and management literature, is the level of availability of a resource. Resource slack can be considered as the opposite of resource scarcity or resource constraints.
Mrityunjay Athreya is an Indian author, educationist and management advisor, widely regarded as one of the founders and pioneers of Indian Management movement and education. A former professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, the London Business School and the Strathclyde Business School, Scotland, and a known speaker at various international forums, he is the founder of Sampradaan Indian Centre for Philanthropy, a non-profit non governmental organization, serving as a platform for charity initiatives by high-net-worth individuals. The Government of India honored him, in 2014, by bestowing on him the third highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan.
Jay R. Galbraith was an American organizational theorist, consultant and professor at the International Institute for Management Development, known for his work on strategy and organization design.
Gerald R. (Jerry) Salancik was an American organizational theorist, and Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is best known for his work with Jeffrey Pfeffer on "organizational decision making" and "the external control of organizations."
Joseph Galaskiewicz is an American sociologist and Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona, known for his work on interorganizational relations and social network analysis.
The Open School of Management is a post-secondary, non-tertiary business education institution with branches in Berlin and New York City.
The composition-based view (CBV) was recently developed by Luo and Child (2015). It is a new theory that explicates the growth of firms without the benefit of resource advantages, proprietary technology, or market power. The CBV complements some existing theories such as resource-based view (RBV), resource management view, and dynamic capability – to create novel insights into the survival of firms that do not possess such strategic assets as original technologies and brands. It emphasizes how ordinary firms with ordinary resources may generate extraordinary results through their creative use of open resources and unique integrating capabilities, resulting in an enhanced speed and a high price-value ratio that are well suited to large numbers of low- to mid-end mass market consumers. The CBV has been commented as “a new view with significant application” for emerging market firms and for small and medium sized enterprises in many countries. The view cautions though that composition-generated advantages are temporary in nature and that composition itself mandates special skills in distinctively identifying, leveraging, and combining open or existing resources inside and outside the firm.
Leonard A. (Len) Schlesinger is an American author, educator, and business leader. He is currently the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and President Emeritus of Babson College where he served as the college's 12th President from 2008 through 2013.
Charles A. O'Reilly III is an American academic. He is the Frank E. Buck Professor of Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the co-author of three books and a number of case studies as well as the co-editor of a fourth book.