Abstract
Jeffrey Pfeffer is among the best known names in management and organization studies. Unfortunately, his latest book seems to have been written by two Jeffrey Pfeffers, each at war with the other. In one corner stands the well-known advocate of humanistic workplaces, the importance of trust and reciprocity, and the benefits of loyalty (Version 1). The general thrust of this work is well captured in some of his book titles—for example, The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First (Pfeffer, 1998). As the subtitles of many of them make clear, his main purpose is to reassure managers that they can make greater profits by treating employees like human beings rather than, say, contingent units of cost-intensive productive capacity. One wonders what he, and other advocates of ‘high-commitment work practices’, would do if the research suggested that more money could be made by subjecting them to regular public floggings. Happily, Pfeffer concludes that self-interest and the greater good are aligned and argues his case with eloquent conviction.
But this time in the ring, he is battling his toughest opponent yet—himself. For in the opposite corner to his other incarnation stands a world-weary pessimist (Version 2), his boxing gloves stuffed with horse shoes, who argues that the virtues identified in his previous books are over-rated, in practice if not in theory, and that those aspiring to leadership positions might be best advised to set them aside. It is the second version who here lands the most punishing blows.
At the outset, Pfeffer identifies a deserving target. This is a multi-billion dollar leadership development industry that peddles simple and often inane solutions to complex organizational problems. As Pfeffer notes, no one needs any qualifications to become a leadership development consultant. Many of their recipes are derived from dubious sources, including the highly selective memoirs of well-known business gurus such as Richard Branson and Jack Welch. In general, such accounts are no more authentic than the airbrushed celebrity photographs that grace the front cover of Vogue magazine. Pfeffer is justly critical of the way in which leadership is increasingly invoked as ‘the’ solution to any and every conceivable problem. As one illustration, Kellerman (2012) reports that all professional schools at Harvard now promise to develop world-changing leaders. So much for simply wanting to be a dentist or a lawyer. This is ‘mission creep’ on a grand scale. But we also see a proliferation of supposedly new theories—for example, authentic leadership, servant leadership, and even spiritual leadership. Each new version claims to have purged leadership theory of its defects and to offer indispensable new insights for practice.
Sadly, there is precious little evidence that anyone is better off from all this activity. Nor is it clear that the huge amount of money spent on leadership development benefits anyone other than its providers. Pfeffer points out that attempts to evaluate development rarely go beyond ‘happy sheets’, in which the quality of the coffee is more likely to influence people’s assessment than whether anything meaningful and actionable has been learned. Such ‘development’ is often an act of faith, born of desperation (‘Something Must Be Done’), rather than rational calculation. These are good points, and they need to be made more often.
In perhaps the best chapter of the book, Pfeffer takes apart the currently popular notion of ‘authentic leadership’. This asserts that leaders must ‘lead with purpose, values and integrity’ if they wish to build sustainable organizations. They must be ‘inclusive’, and in doing so bring their real positive essence to the fore. To be authentic is to be a good human being and promote these qualities in the organizations that leaders are responsible for. Not sure how to proceed? Then the leadership development industry can train you. As Pfeffer rightly says, ‘The idea that one would or could be trained to become or at least appear authentic oozes with delicious irony’ (p. 89). He also asks, ‘what if your real self is an asshole?’ (p. 94). There seems little value in proposing that effective leadership requires us to connect with an authentic inner core that is somehow divorced from space, time and context. Authentic leadership may itself be an inauthentic concept, up there with the notion of a sober drunk or an ethical fraudster. Indeed, as Pfeffer notes, one of its main advocates has had several academic papers retracted for questionable research practices.
Again, this is persuasive. But Ford and Harding (2011) and Fairhurst (2007) are among those to have subjected authenticity to more substantial critiques than Pfeffer manages here. The former uses object relations theory to criticize the notion that only positive aspects of a leader’s identity can be considered authentic. Fairhurst (2007) rejects the idea that a stable self exists ‘in there’ waiting to be discovered. Rather, she examines how the self is socially constructed through the language and other games that actors play in organizations. Transformational leadership theory has dominated the field for decades. It is now increasingly attacked for being unwieldy, poorly researched and allowing leaders too much power over followers—a power that has an obvious capacity to corrupt (e.g. Tourish, 2013; Van Knippenberg and Sitkin, 2013). In many ways, authentic leadership is a ‘get out of jail free card’ for this theory since it argues that those leaders who do not foreground a noble moral purpose consistent with their (assumed) positive inner core are pseudo-leaders rather than the genuine ‘transformational’ article. By this reckoning, Hitler was not a leader, nor was Stalin—a conclusion that I find frankly preposterous.
If the chapter on authenticity is the best in the book, others are more problematic. Pfeffer’s book offers no serious consideration of the systemic issues that institutionalize dysfunctional power relations in workplaces. Such relations are treated as if they were naturalized parts of the ecosystem, rather than a socially constructed means that people have invented, and can reinvent, for their own purposes. For example, Pfeffer notes that we accept democracy as a governing principle in society but that there is a widespread presumption to the effect that ‘an appointed leadership is more to be trusted with the company’s well-being than any form of democratic or semidemocratic process for selecting and removing leaders’ (p. 190). And that is it. Significant academic work on organizational democracy (e.g. Deetz, 1992) is ignored, the possibility that the ‘presumption’ Pfeffer identifies may reflect sectional rather than unitarist interests is not considered, and the prospect of change seems to be regarded as so remote that it isn’t worth serious discussion.
The problems posed by the author’s war with himself are typified by chapters such as ‘Why leaders eat first’. This introduces the idea, attributed to the US military, that officers eat after their enlisted men. Version 1 of our author makes a cameo appearance, noting that if leaders put the interests of their followers center stage, then they may produce great teams and improve company performance. But he is instantly floored by a stinging left hook. Version 2 notes that in actual fact, most leaders do no such thing. For example, CEO pay has soared to new heights—in the United States—to 330 times what an average worker earns, compared to 20 times in 1965. In another chapter, Pfeffer reviews evidence that shows lying is frequent among us all, that senior managers lie often and that they can expect few sanctions when they do so. The conclusion? This comes in a chapter entitled ‘Take care of yourself’. The bottom line is that caring leadership, trust, reciprocity and honesty are all rare. On the other hand, many ‘successful’ leaders are narcissists, and worse. It all goes to show that the world is a rat race. You should assume that everyone else always acts in pursuit of their own self-interest and do the same.
Pfeffer rests his case for pessimism on the oft-repeated notion that the world is as it is rather than we would like it to be. He is particularly critical of what he calls the ‘just world’ theory—that the world is either a just place already, or can be made so. It is therefore best to copy the maladies that we see all around us, thereby improving our prospects of becoming King Rat, albeit while adding to the sum total of human misery. He seems unable to imagine a world in which the predatory capitalism that is rampant in the United States could be any different, other than in a few exceptional organizations. But if we all adapt to the world as it is, and see its conventions as unchanging and unchangeable, no human progress is possible. By that reasoning, it would have been futile to campaign against slavery in 19th-century America, for civil rights as recently as the 1960s and against Apartheid in the 1970s/1980s.
In line with many prominent US scholars, Pfeffer appears unaware of most critical work in the field. Critical Leadership Studies (CLS) is an emerging sub-area, replete with theoretical and practical insights into leadership issues (e.g. Collinson, 2014). CLS doesn’t assume that the aims of formal leaders invariably reflect the best interests of followers. Rather, it critiques power relations, foregrounds issues of control and resistance and problematizes such binary distinctions as leadership/followership with which the literature is replete. One would have thought that a book of this kind could fruitfully draw on some of this work. That it doesn’t no longer surprises. But it is a weakness. It means that, overall, the level of theorization on offer is minimal.
Pfeffer sometimes insists that his purpose is to improve leadership practice and the organizations within which it is enacted. The subtitle of his book is ‘Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time’. How this is supposed to happen when he subjects notions of progress to a pugilistic assault on almost every page is unclear. So when he suggests that ‘If we really want leaders to look out for others, companies and maybe even the larger society need to give them some pretty concrete reasons for doing so’ (p. 169), it comes across as an afterthought. ‘Companies’ aren’t sentient beings who decide anything. Rather, strategic decisions are mostly made by top leaders—the same ones that Pfeffer seems willing to coach in the ruthless pursuit of their own self-interest. To imply that they might somehow opt to defy his own advice and transform themselves into positive agents for change is an unconvincing prospectus.
Pfeffer makes many well-aimed criticisms of the leadership development industry. However, this book shows the impossibility of marrying hope and pessimism on the same page. We need change. But books that criticize the status quo while suggesting that little can be done about it are poorly placed to show a way forward.