Pfeffer has given talks in 39 countries around the world and has taught management seminars for numerous companies and associations in the United States including Sutter Health, the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, John Hancock, Hewlett-Packard, and the Online Publishers Association now called Digital Content Next (DCN).
He was elected a fellow of the Academy of Management more than 25 years ago, was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, won the Richard D. Irwin award for scholarly contributions to management, is in the Thinker's 50 Hall of Fame, and in 2011, was awarded an honorary doctorate from Tilburg University in The Netherlands.
Pfeffer has done theoretical and empirical research on the subjects of human resource management, power and politics in organizations, evidence-based management, the knowing-doing gap, leadership, stratification and labor markets inside organizations, the sociology of science, how and why theories become self-fulfilling, the psychological relationship between time and money, and economic evaluation.
He is the author of 15 books including 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, What Were They Thinking?
[5] Pfeffer's book, entitled Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time, was published in 2015 by HarperBusiness.
Based on his research and that of others he advises people wanting to advance their careers to "share perceptions" of their work and to encourage others to "sing their praises".
[6] He has also written cases on companies that practice high commitment/high performance work arrangements, including Southwest Airlines, DaVita Inc., the Men's Wearhouse, Holy Cross Hospital, SAS Institute, and the Andean region of Kimberly-Clark.
For almost three years, he wrote a career advice column for Capital, the leading economics and business magazine in Turkey.