Bio
Jeffery Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University where he has taught since 1979. He is the author or co-author of fourteen books including Power: Why Some People Have It–and Others Don’t, 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, and What Were They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom About Management, a collection of 27 essays about management topics, as well as more than 150 articles and book chapters. Pfeffer’s latest book, entitled Leadership B.S.: Why Workplaces and Careers Suffer–and What To Do About It ,is scheduled to be published early in 2015 by Grand Central Publishing.
Dr. Pfeffer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University and his Ph.D. from Stanford. He began his career at the business school at the University of Illinois and then taught at the University of California, Berkeley. Pfeffer has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School, Singapore Management University, London Business School, and a frequent visitor at IESE in Barcelona.
From 2003-2007, Pfeffer wrote a monthly column, “The Human Factor,” for the 600,000-person circulation business magazine, Business 2.0 and from 2007-2010, he wrote a monthly column providing career advice for Capital, a leading business and economics magazine in Turkey. Pfeffer has written columns and blogs for the Corner Office section of BNET (CBS Interactive), the Harvard Business Review website, Politico, Bloomberg/Business Week, Inc., CEIBS Business Review (China), Nikkei (Japan), and for the “On Leadership” section of The Washington Post. Pfeffer has appeared in segments on CBS Sunday Morning, 60 Minutes, and CNBC as well as television programs in Korea, and has been quoted and featured in news articles from countries around the globe.
Pfeffer currently serves on the board of directors of nonprofit Quantum Leap Healthcare. In the past he has served on the boards of Resumix, Unicru, and Workstream, all human capital software companies, Audible Magic, an internet company, and SonoSite, a company designing and manufacturing portable ultrasound machines, as well as on the board of the San Francisco Playhouse. Pfeffer has presented seminars in 38 countries throughout the world as well as doing consulting and providing executive education for numerous companies, associations, and universities in the United States.
Jeffrey Pfeffer received an honorary doctorate from Tilburg University in the Netherlands, has won the Richard I. Irwin Award presented by the Academy of Management for scholarly contributions to management, and numerous awards for articles and books.