Jeffrey Pfeffer

Stanford Graduate School of Business professor and the most rigorous academic analyst of organizational power — his books Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't and The Human Equation are foundational texts for understanding how power actually works in organizations.

Creates the most evidence-based framework for organizational power — Pfeffer's central argument (that power is not a dirty word but a necessary tool for getting things done, and that most people fail by being too deferential) is backed by decades of organizational research.