Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies

One of Amazon.com's Best Business Books for 2004 "I know of no other book that provides the insightfulness, the detail, and thoroughness of Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies. It synthesizes a great many theoretical strands and is truly brilliant. It will be the definitive text to which scholars and policy makers will turn for better understanding of this complex topic."--Vicki Smith, Administrative Science Quarterly "In this masterful and insightful book, Stephen Barley and Gideon Kunda study the intricate and often counter-intuitive consequences associated with the changing nature of work... Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies makes an invaluable contribution to the study of contemporary organizations and the transformation of work... [A] must read."--Sarosh Kuruvilla, Industrial and Labor Relations Review "This book fills an important gap by providing one of the first major research ethnographies of the high-tech sector, a major component of the knowledge economy... It succeeds in providing the thick description that this field has needed for some time."--Vincent Mosco, Labour/Le Travail "The authors document a serious study of a specific community: the high-technology IT world of Silicon Valley at the height of the 1990s boom years. While the book is not a guidance manual for contractors or consultants, the dilemmas, contradictions, and situations recounted by the different actors would resonate and provide useful guidance for consultants and hiring managers in the development sector."--Frances Rubin, Development in Practice "Barley and Kunda provide a valuable study that is sure to appeal to those interested in the various manifestations of contingent work or the inner workings of labor markets."--Jeremy Reynolds,American Journal of Sociology

Stephen R. Barley is Charles M. Pigott Professor of Management Science and Engineering and Co-Director of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization at Stanford's School of Engineering. Gideon Kunda is Associate Professor in the Department of Labor Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Preface ix Chapter 1: Unlikely Rebels 1 Itinerant Experts 1 The Unraveling of Permanent Employment 9 The Legal Context of Contingent Work 12 Estimating the Size of the Contingent Workforce 16 Making Sense of Contingent Work 18 The Study 26 Organization of the Book 30 Part I: Setting the Stage Chapter 2: Clients 37 Why Do Clients Hire Contractors? 38 How Do Clients Hire Contractors? 49 Conclusion 51 Chapter 3: Contractors 53 Why Do Contractors Become Contractors? 55 What Kinds of Contractors Are There? 64 The Roles Contractors Play for Clients 67 Conclusion 72 Chapter 4: Agencies 73 Sales Culture and Technical Culture 74 What Types of Staffing Agencies Are There? 84 Conclusion 91 Part II: Life in the Market Chapter 5: The Information Game: Finding Deals 98 What Contractors Do 99 What Clients Do 108 What Staffing Agencies Do 114 Conclusion 133 Chapter 6: Making the Deal 136 Hiring Manager Evaluations 138 Negotiating the Terms of Employment 144 Closing Deals 161 Conclusion 166 Part III: Life on the Job Chapter 7: Contractors as Commodities 177 Maintaining a Task Orientation 177 Delegating Management Responsibilities 180 Creating Outsiders 183 Conclusion 187 Chapter 8: Contractors as Experts 188 Integration: Creating Team Members 188 Dependence 193 Conclusion 198 Chapter 9: Navigating between Respect and Resentment 199 Tales of Respect 199 Tales of Resentment 204 Forming an Identity 214 Part IV: Living the Cycle Chapter 10: Temporal Capital 223 The Temporal Patterns of Contracting 225 The Rhetoric and Reality of Flexibility 241 Chapter 11: Building and Maintaining Human Capital 244 The Danger of Obsolescence 244 The Risks of Learning 248 Strategies for Remaining Current 251 Conclusion 263 Chapter 12: Building and Maintaining Social Capital 264 Reach 266 Reputation and Occupational Circles 269 Reciprocity and Referral Cliques 273 Networking: Building and Maintaining Networks 276 Chapter 13: Itinerant Professionals in a Knowledge Economy 285 Itinerant Experts: The Contracting Life 286 The Ambiguities of Self-Reliance 289 Itinerant Experts and the Social Order 292 The Occupational Dimension 302 Supporting Itinerant Professionalism 311 Epilogue 317 References 321 Appendix: Cast of Characters 333 Index 337