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Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies
Stephen R. Barley
Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy
Princeton University Press
July 2004
352 pages ISBN: 0691119430 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Over the last several decades, employers have
increasingly replaced permanent employees with temporary
workers and independent contractors to cut labor costs and
enhance flexibility. Although commentators have focused
largely on low-wage temporary work, the use of skilled
contractors has also grown exponentially, especially in
high-technology areas. Yet, almost nothing is known about
contracting or about the people who do it. This book seeks
to break the silence. Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm
Bodies tells the story of how the market for temporary
professionals operates from the perspective of the
contractors who do the work, the managers who employ them,
the permanent employees who work beside them, and the
staffing agencies who broker deals. Based on a year of field
work in three staffing agencies, life histories with over
seventy contractors and studies of workers in some of
America's best known firms, the book dismantles the myths of
temporary employment and offers instead a grounded
description of how contracting works. Engagingly
written, it goes beyond rhetoric to examine why contractors
leave permanent employment, why managers hire them, and how
staffing agencies operate. Barley and Kunda paint a richly
layered portrait of contract professionals. Readers learn
how contractors find jobs, how agents negotiate, and what it
is like to shoulder the risks of managing one's own
"employability." The authors illustrate how the
reality of flexibility often differs substantially from its
promise. Viewing the knowledge economy in terms of
organizations and markets is not enough, Barley and Kunda
conclude. Rather, occupational communities and networks of
skilled experts are what grease the skids of the high-tech,
"matrix economy" where firms become way stations in the flow
of expertise.
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