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Speaker Event Hosted by Professor Stephen R. Barley - "Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies"

Thursday, October 11, 2007 at 7:15 PM (GMT)

London, Greater London

Ticket Information

Ticket Type Sales End Price Fee Quantity
SCGB members Ended £26.00 £0.00
Non-SCGB members Ended £27.50 £0.00

Event Details

We are delighted that Professor Barley has agreed to speak to our members. He is the resident Stanford study abroad docent at Oxford for the Fall and Winter quarters. (Stephen R. Barley Centre for Work, Technology and Organization Stanford University).
 
Over the last several decades, employers have increasingly replaced permanent employees with temporary workers and independent contractors to cut labour 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 technical contracting or about the people who do it. Drawing on his ethnography of contract labour markets, Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy (co-authored with Gideon Kunda and published by Princeton University Press), Professor Barley will discuss what life as a contractor is like and how contractor’s conceptualize and manage their human and social capital. The study provides a window onto the changing nature of work and employment.