Chapter 33 Further Reading

Foundational Research

1. French, J. R. P., Jr., & Raven, B. (1959). "The bases of social power." In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in Social Power (pp. 150–167). University of Michigan Press.

The original paper introducing the taxonomy of power that anchors this chapter. French and Raven's five-type model (expanded to six with the later addition of informational power) remains the most widely cited framework in organizational psychology for analyzing power relationships. The paper is shorter and more readable than its academic origin suggests. Any serious student of power dynamics in confrontation should read the source. The framework's enduring utility lies in how it reveals that "power" is not a monolithic quantity but a set of distinct mechanisms, each with different implications for how it can be challenged, built, and navigated.

2. Detert, J. R., & Burris, E. R. (2007). "Leadership behavior and employee voice: Is the door really open?" Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 869–884.

The landmark empirical study demonstrating that managerial behavior is the primary determinant of employee upward voice — more than employee personality, communication skill, or motivation. Detert and Burris introduced the concept of "implicit voice theories": the often-unexamined beliefs employees hold about when speaking up is appropriate or safe. Essential reading for understanding why the advice "just speak up" misses most of what actually prevents upward voice.

3. Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley.

Edmondson's accessible book-length treatment of psychological safety research, designed for practitioners rather than researchers. Drawing on decades of field work in hospitals, technology firms, and manufacturing environments, she makes a compelling case that psychological safety is a performance variable, not just a "nice to have." The book includes specific tools for leaders who want to build psychological-safety conditions, and its analysis of what happens in low-safety organizations (suppressed error reporting, slower adaptation, higher turnover) is sobering. Highly recommended for anyone who manages people.

4. Galinsky, A. D., Magee, J. C., Gruenfeld, D. H., Whitson, J. A., & Liljenquist, K. A. (2008). "Power reduces the press of the situation: Implications for creativity, conformity, and dissonance." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(6), 1450–1466.

A fascinating research paper on how power changes the cognition and behavior of those who hold it. Galinsky and colleagues find that high-power individuals are more likely to act on their own internal states and preferences and less likely to attend to the perspectives of those around them. This helps explain why confronting upward is hard: the more-powerful person is, almost by definition, less attending to the confronter's perspective. It also has implications for leaders: power shapes cognition in ways that can make them systematically less receptive to information from lower-status sources.

On Identity, Race, Gender, and Voice

5. Rosette, A. S., Koval, C. Z., Ma, A., & Livingston, R. (2016). "Race matters for women leaders: Intersectional effects on agentic deficiencies and penalties." Leadership Quarterly, 27(3), 429–445.

A rigorous empirical study examining the intersectional effects of race and gender on leadership evaluations. Rosette and colleagues document that Black women face uniquely compounded disadvantages — not simply the sum of racial and gender bias but a distinct pattern of evaluations that other groups do not face. The study has direct implications for how Black women navigate organizational voice and confrontation, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why the advice "just speak up more confidently" is inadequate for everyone in equal measure.

6. Crenshaw, K. (1989). "Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics." University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989, 139–167.

The foundational paper introducing the concept of intersectionality in legal and organizational contexts. Crenshaw demonstrates that treating race and gender as separate categories that can be analyzed independently fails to capture the experiences of Black women, who exist at the intersection of both and face discrimination that neither category alone can describe or redress. Essential intellectual context for understanding why the research on race and the research on gender do not simply add up to capture what Black women navigate.

7. Brescoll, V. L. (2012). "Who takes the floor and why: Gender, power, and volubility in organizations." Administrative Science Quarterly, 57(4), 622–641.

A careful study of how power and gender interact to determine who speaks in organizational settings. Brescoll finds that high-power women who speak more are evaluated more negatively than high-power men who speak more, and that women have internalized this and often self-censor as a result. The implications for upward voice are significant: the penalty for speaking up is not uniform across gender, and women in organizations face an additional cost that men do not when deciding whether to raise concerns.

On Confronting Down

8. Scott, K. (2019). Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. St. Martin's Press.

Kim Scott's widely read book on managerial feedback is, at its core, a treatment of compassionate directness. The "Radical Candor" framework (care personally, challenge directly) maps well onto what this chapter calls compassionate directness, and Scott's analysis of the failure modes — ruinous empathy, obnoxious aggression, manipulative insincerity — is incisive. The book's greatest strength is its specificity: Scott gives detailed guidance on how to have feedback conversations in ways that are clear without being punishing. An excellent practical companion to this chapter.

9. Stone, D., & Heen, S. (2014). Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well. Viking.

The companion to the influential Difficult Conversations, this book focuses on the receiving end of feedback — which is essential for anyone who wants to confront downward effectively. Understanding why feedback is hard to receive (the identity threat, the relationship dynamic, the discernment between legitimate and illegitimate feedback) makes for better givers of feedback. Stone and Heen's analysis of "feedback triggers" — the automatic responses that make even well-delivered feedback land badly — is especially useful for supervisors wondering why their carefully constructed feedback conversations are not producing the results they hope for.

On Power and Organizational Dynamics

10. Pfeffer, J. (2010). Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't. HarperBusiness.

Jeffrey Pfeffer's bracingly practical book on organizational power is not a comfortable read, but it is a clarifying one. Pfeffer argues that power in organizations is real, significant, and often misunderstood by people who prefer to believe meritocracy governs outcomes. His analysis of how people build, maintain, and lose organizational power is relevant background for anyone trying to understand the structural dynamics that shape what confrontations are feasible. The book's perspective is amoral in a way that makes some readers uncomfortable — Pfeffer describes how power works rather than how it should work — which is precisely its value.

11. Meyerson, D. E. (2001). Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change at Work. Harvard Business School Press.

A thoughtful treatment of how people who are in some ways outsiders to dominant organizational culture navigate it without either assimilating entirely or departing. Meyerson's "tempered radicals" are people who care deeply about changing something in their organization or profession and pursue that change through persistence, small acts, and strategic patience rather than dramatic confrontation. Highly relevant for anyone navigating the space between speaking up and being labeled disruptive, and particularly relevant for women and people of color in organizations that are not structurally built to hear them.

12. Carney, D. R., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Yap, A. J. (2010). "Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance." Psychological Science, 21(10), 1363–1368. [Read alongside the replication controversy.]*

This widely cited paper proposed that adopting expansive, open physical postures briefly before a high-stakes interaction could influence hormone levels and increase confidence. The original findings have faced significant replication challenges — subsequent studies have not consistently reproduced the physiological effects — but the paper opened an important conversation about the relationship between physical state, psychological state, and performance in high-stakes confrontational situations. Read the original alongside the follow-up debate (particularly Ranehill et al., 2015) as an example of how the scientific process works, and as a reminder that the relationship between body and mind in confrontation is real even if the specific mechanism claimed in the original paper is contested.