Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy

by Professors Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda

Steve Barley is the Charles M. Pigott Professor of Management Science and Engineering and Co-Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization at Stanford University's School of Engineering. Professor Gideon Kunda is at the Department of Labor Studies at Tel Aviv University.

In the 1830s, England was the first to undergo transformation from an agrarian society into an industrialized society. Factories were built, farmers turned into workers, factory owners became as wealthy as aristocrats, workers created unions, and the modern world was born. Industrialization led to socialism, labor strikes, and the communist revolutions in Russia and China. Industrialization also made possible the two world wars.

It's happening again. We are restructuring from industrialized mechanical production into a globalized digital economy. This means workers change from career professionals into freelance computer experts (career jobs are disappearing), jobs (and entire industries) move from the USA to India and China, and the expert knowledge workers become wealthy (think of the guys who run computer companies). In agrarian societies, land was wealth. During industrialization, wealth was based on ownership of factories and mineral resources. In the digital economy, intellectual property (IP) is wealth. The ability to use technology to manage business processes produces wealth.

Silicon Valley is the center of this global transformation. Silicon Valley companies, workers, unions, recruiters, and venture capitalists are figuring out which structures are obsolete and how to build new methods. Startups, VC funding, contractors, and many other new concepts were created in Silicon Valley. For ten years, I was the national director of the NWU, a UAW-affiliated trade union for technical writers. I developed and carried out national strategies to benefit technical writers and the tech writing industry. For example, I was part of the political process to rewrite California's law on overtime. I worked at more than 25 dotcoms and corps as a contractor or tech pubs manager. I also started two companies, nearly set up a startup, and co-founded a VC-funded startup. I'm an advisor to several more companies. As one of the people deeply involved in the economic transformation of Silicon Valley, I was interviewed extensively by these professors at Stanford about my work in Silicon Valley.

Review by Prof. Paul DiMaggio (Princeton University): Few developments have been as heavily hyped and as poorly understood as the trend towards 'contingent employment' among the professional/technical/managerial classes. We know from statistical studies that many professionals, especially technical professionals, are hired as temporary, contract workers--but we have known very little about why they work this way or about the conditions of their labor. Barley and Kunda put flesh on the bones of these skeletal figures, exploring the diversity of motives and working conditions, as well as regularities in how they evaluate jobs, build careers, and navigate tricky relationships with employment agencies, high-tech firms, and professional peers. Gurus significantly expands our understanding of what is sometimes called 'the new economy,' exemplifying the value of organizational ethnography and, especially in its superb account of life in labor markets, contributing distinctively to economic sociology. Moreover, the authors' prose is so clear and graceful that Gurus should become the book of choice for teaching sociology and organizational behavior to budding engineers and natural scientists.

(Princeton University Press, 2004. 352 pages. ISBN 978-0691119434)