3/26/2014 – Jeffrey Pfeffer: Do Workplace Hierarchies Still Matter?

In a world where a junior staffer can tweet to the CEO, the lines that traditionally delineated power and influence have been blurred. So much so, in fact, that when Jeffrey Pfeffer teaches about corporate America’s hierarchical power structure, his students often push back. That model of power isn’t relevant anymore, they insist. Such 20th-century thinking.

Pfeffer’s students are largely millennials — the youngest generation now in the workforce, born between about 1980 and 1992. He says that they, like much of the media, think the traditional power structure in business is changing and that companies are becoming more dynamic and less hierarchical.

Jeffrey Pfeffer is Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford, and a faculty affiliate of the Center on Longevity.

Read the full article at Stanford Graduate School of Business.