Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies

Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy

by Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda

Princeton UP, 2004

ISBN: 9780691119434
Pages: 352

Category: Human Resources

In this summary you will learn

• "How your company should work with contract employees
• How to manage contract labor
• How to be a contractor

Why you should read Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies

Some years ago, during the height of the technology stock bubble, a book entitled Free Agent Nation made quite a splash by glorifying the phenomenon of independent contracting. Less famously and far less optimistically, a number of economists and anthropologists pointed to this trend as a grave sign of the decay of workers’ position in American society. Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda, the authors of this study, steer a careful, meticulously documented middle course. They examined the observable fact of independent contracting in the high technology industry from three viewpoints: the contractors, the headhunters and the client firms. They say that the contractor is a new, different kind of knowledge worker with a unique set of opportunities and constraints. The book is clearly written, based on apparently sound evidence and illustrated with carefully chosen anecdotes. getAbstract suggests that its primary appeal will be to academics and other students of labor market trends, but also recommends it to firms that hire contractors and to contractors themselves - both will benefit from the authors’ analysis of their market.

About the Authors

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 an associate professor in the Department of Labor Studies at Tel Aviv University.

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