Jeffrey Pfeffer’s work strips away comforting myths about merit and leadership to expose how power actually operates inside organisations. Drawing on decades of research, he shows that influence is accumulated through perception, alliances, and control of resources rather than competence alone. While his “rules of power” are descriptively accurate, they are ethically neutral and often corrosive. Pfeffer’s later work confronts the human cost of these systems, forcing leaders to choose between naïve idealism and cynical effectiveness—and to decide whether power will be used merely to win or to change the conditions under which winning occurs.

Contents

1. Introduction

Most people enter organizations believing that effort will be noticed, competence rewarded, and integrity remembered. Over time, many discover a quieter truth: advancement rarely follows the clean lines described in mission statements. Instead, it bends toward visibility, proximity to decision-makers, and an unspoken understanding of how influence actually moves. Jeffrey Pfeffer’s work begins precisely at this uncomfortable realization—not to excuse it, but to explain it.

Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford Graduate School of Business is one of the most provocative thinkers in organizational behavior. His work challenges the comforting myth that leadership success is driven primarily by talent, merit, integrity, or hard work. Instead, Pfeffer argues that power—how it is accumulated, exercised, and defended—is the real currency of organizational life.

His central claim is unsettling but compelling:

People who succeed often do so not because they are better, but because they understand and play the power game more effectively.

This article explains Pfeffer’s Rules of Power, evaluates whether they are true, explores how they are used in practice, offers a deep critique, and concludes with recommendations for ethical and effective application.

2. What Are the Rules of Power?

Power is rarely discussed openly, yet it shapes nearly every decision that matters. Meetings, promotions, budgets, and strategy are not neutral processes; they are arenas where influence is exercised and defended. Pfeffer’s rules emerge from observing these arenas as they are, not as organisations claim them to be. They describe the patterns that repeat themselves wherever humans compete for scarce status and control.

Pfeffer does not present his rules as moral guidance. They are descriptive, not prescriptive—observations about what actually works in organisations.

2.1 The Core Rules of Power (Summary)

• Power is more important than performance
  • Competence helps, but visibility, alliances, and perception matter more.
• You must want power
  • Power rarely comes to those who claim not to seek it.
• Appear confident—certainty beats accuracy
  • People follow conviction, not nuance.
• Control resources
  • Budgets, headcount, information, and access are sources of leverage.
• Build alliances relentlessly
  • Power is social, not individual.
• Manage your image
  • How you are perceived matters more than what you actually do.
• Break rules strategically
  • Norm violators often advance faster than norm followers.
• Silence and ambiguity are tools
  • Saying less can increase authority.
• Winning matters more than being liked
  • Affection does not translate into influence.
• Once you have power, use it
  • Power unused erodes quickly.

These rules are not presented by Pfeffer as a fixed checklist, but as recurring patterns distilled from decades of observation across organisations.

3. Are the Rules of Power True?

The persistence of Pfeffer’s ideas comes from an unsettling familiarity. Readers do not encounter them as abstract theory, but as recognition of colleagues who advanced faster, leaders who survived failure, and systems that rewarded confidence over correctness. The question, then, is not whether the rules are flattering, but whether they accurately describe the forces at work beneath the surface of organisational life.

3.1 Empirical Reality: Yes, Largely

Pfeffer’s claims are supported by:

• Decades of organisational research
• Case studies from corporate, political, and academic institutions
• Observed promotion patterns and leadership outcomes

Evidence consistently shows:

• Promotions correlate more with sponsorship than performance
• Confident communicators are rated as more competent—even when wrong
• Ethical restraint does not predict advancement
• Rule-followers often stall while rule-benders rise

3.2 Why the Rules Feel Uncomfortable

• They contradict meritocratic ideals
• They expose hypocrisy in leadership rhetoric
• They force a distinction between effectiveness and virtue

Pfeffer’s argument is not that the rules should exist—but that denying them does not make them disappear.

4. How Are the Rules of Power Used?

In practice, power is seldom seized in dramatic acts. It accumulates quietly through relationships, narratives, and small decisions that compound over time. Those who understand this do not always announce their intentions; they shape agendas, control information, and build coalitions while appearing merely “effective.” Whether consciously or instinctively, many successful actors apply Pfeffer’s rules long before they can articulate them.

4.1 In Practice, Power Rules Are Used By

• Senior executives consolidating influence
• Politicians navigating institutions
• Academics competing for tenure and grants
• Founders shaping narratives and alliances
• Bureaucratic leaders controlling information flow

4.2 Common Power Tactics (Observed)

• Strategic self-promotion
• Credit capture
• Coalition-building across silos
• Agenda-setting through meetings and language
• Reputation management over substance
• Selective transparency

Importantly, many people use these rules unconsciously, while others deny them publicly but practice them privately.

5. Pfeffer’s Follow-Up Works: Refinement and Critique

As Pfeffer’s career progressed, his focus widened from explaining how power works to examining what it does. The early clarity about influence gave way to a more troubling inquiry: if organisations consistently reward certain behaviours, what kinds of leaders—and workplaces—are they producing? His later books reflect a growing concern with the human cost of the systems his earlier work described.

5.1 Leadership BS (2015)

Pfeffer attacks the leadership industry itself, arguing that:

• Leadership literature promotes comforting myths
• Values-based leadership is often performative
• Organisations reward results, not virtue
• Leaders preach empowerment while centralising control

Key refinement:

Talking about ethics does not mean ethics drive outcomes.

5.2 Dying for a Paycheck (2018)

This book introduces a moral reckoning.

Pfeffer documents how:

• Toxic leadership harms physical and mental health
• Stress from bad management increases mortality
• Power-seeking cultures create long-term societal costs

Crucial shift:

• Pfeffer acknowledges that power dynamics, left unchecked, cause real harm
• The system rewards behaviour that damages people

This is not a retraction; it is an indictment of the system.

6. Full Critique of Pfeffer’s Rules of Power

Understanding power does not require admiring it. Pfeffer’s framework is compelling precisely because it is incomplete, brilliant in diagnosis, but silent on redemption. Critics are right to ask whether describing the rules without restraining them risks legitimising harm. The tension lies in whether exposure leads to reform or merely better-armed players.

6.1 Strengths

• Ruthlessly honest
• Empirically grounded
• Exposes organisational hypocrisy
• Equips people who are otherwise naïve
• Explains real-world outcomes better than idealistic models

6.2 Weaknesses and Risks

• Normative vacuum
  • Describes what works without moral guidance
• Self-reinforcing cynicism
  • Can normalise unethical behaviour
• Short-term bias
  • Power won today may destroy trust tomorrow
• Cultural blindness
  • Rules apply unevenly across cultures and contexts
• Psychological toll
  • Playing power games corrodes meaning and wellbeing

6.3 The Core Tension

Pfeffer’s work answers:

“Why do people rise?”

But it does not fully answer:

“At what cost—and to whom?”

7. Recommendations: Using Power Without Becoming the Problem

The choice facing leaders is not whether power exists, but how consciously it is handled. Pretending power dynamics are absent leaves them unchallenged; embracing them without limits corrodes trust and meaning. The practical question becomes how to operate effectively in imperfect systems while refusing to reproduce their worst outcomes.

Pfeffer’s realism is not an argument for cynicism, but a refusal to outsource responsibility to comforting myths.

7.1 Learn the Rules—But Don’t Worship Them

• Awareness prevents exploitation
• Naïveté is not a virtue

7.2 Separate Understanding Power from Abusing Power

• Influence can be used to protect, not dominate
• Power can be structural, not personal

7.3 Combine Power Literacy with Ethical Anchors

• Define non-negotiables in advance
• Decide what you will not trade for advancement

7.4 Use Power to Change the System

• Redesign incentives
• Reduce zero-sum competition
• Reward long-term outcomes

7.5 Watch for Health and Culture Signals

• High turnover, silence, stress, and burnout are warning signs
• Power without accountability eventually collapses

7.6 Teach Power Transparently

• Make power dynamics discussable
• Sunlight reduces abuse

8. Conclusion

Pfeffer’s work endures because it names what many sense but hesitate to say aloud. Power, once acknowledged, cannot be unseen. Yet awareness alone is not enough. What ultimately distinguishes leadership is not mastery of influence, but the decision about what that influence is for, and who bears the cost when it is used.

Jeffrey Pfeffer’s Rules of Power are largely true, deeply unsettling, and dangerously incomplete on their own.

They are best understood as:

• A diagnostic tool, not a moral compass
• A map of reality, not a guide to meaning
• A warning, not an endorsement

Ignoring power does not make organisations ethical.
Understanding power and choosing how to wield it does.

The real leadership challenge is not whether power works.
It is whether we can use it without becoming what we claim to oppose.