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

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.

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.