Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy PDF
Preview Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy
Gurus, Hired Guns, K O and Warm Bodies O B - Ininerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy E S S Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda E R P Y T I S R E V I N U N O T E C N I R P A Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies This page intentionally left blank Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies itinerant experts in a knowledge economy Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda princeton university press princeton and oxford Copyright © 2004 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY All Rights Reserved Second printing, and first paperback printing, 2006 Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12795-8 Paperback ISBN-10: 0-691-12795-6 The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows Barley, Stephen R. Gurus, hired guns, and warm bodies : itinerant experts in a knowledge economy / Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-11943-0 (cl : alk. paper) 1. Information services industry—Employees—United States—Case studies. 2. Information technology—Employees—United States—Case studies. 3. Electronic data processing consultants—United States—Case studies. 4. Independent contractors—United States—Case studies. 5. Self-employed—United States—Case studies. 6. Temporary employees—United States—Case studies. 7. Part-time employment— United States—Case studies. I. Kunda, Gideon, 1952– II. Title. HD8039.I372U63 2004 331.2—dc22 2003068993 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Sabon Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ pup.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 CONTENTS Preface ix Chapter1 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 vi CONTENTS 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 CONTENTS vii 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 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE As ethnographers, our agenda is to depict the world of technical con- tracting from the perspective of those who live it. We are also obligated by the ethics of our craft to shield the people who have so generously opened their worlds to us from unwanted intrusions. For this reason, we have used pseudonyms for the organizations we studied and for the individuals whom we observed and interviewed. This precludes us from publicly thanking the people who took us into their world, gave of their time, and shared their perspectives and knowledge with us. But those whose lives are depicted on the pages of this book know who they are, and to them we are deeply in- debted. We hope they find we did justice to the complexity of their world and that we contributed in a small way to making it more manageable. There are others without whose assistance and forbearance the book would not have been possible. Peter Yessne, chairman of Staffing Indus- try Analysts, Inc., kindly took the time, early and late in our study, to ori- ent us to the staffing industry. His insights into the industry’s structure and practices were invaluable. Our colleagues Galit Ailon, Diane Bailey, Yinon Cohen, Noah Lewin-Epstein, Bob Sutton, and Ely Weitz offered valuable comments on various versions of this book. Over the course of the two years that we were in the field, a number of graduate students assisted in collecting data. James Evans and Siobhan O’Mahony worked with us over the entire period, doing numerous inter- views and field observations and contributing their insights and interpre- tations. In the process, both became accomplished ethnographers. Fa- brizio Ferraro and Ozgecan Kocak did fieldwork at Systems Professionals. Mark Mortenson, Jeff Martin, Joan Ubeda, Greta Hsu, and Filippe San- tos interviewed contractors as part of a class on ethnographic field meth- ods taught in Stanford’s School of Engineering. Laura Casteneda worked with us for a summer helping interview contractors. We thank them all. The Stanford University/General Motors Collaborative Work Systems Laboratory and the Department of Labor Studies at Tel Aviv University provided partial support for the preparation of the manuscript. The Net- work Society Project, under the direction of Rolf Wolff at Gothenburg University and Ingalill Holmberg at the Stockholm School of Economics, funded some of the travel necessary for our collaboration, and its partic- ipants offered support and helpful comments along the way. We dedicate the book to our wives and lifelong partners, Debbi Barley and Lezli Rubin-Kunda, who give a sense of permanence in a world of temporary affiliations and contingent commitments.
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