Table Of ContentGurus, Hired Guns,
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Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda
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Gurus, Hired Guns,
and Warm Bodies
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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
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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.
