| GURUS, HIRED GUNS, AND WARM BODIES Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy Stephen R. Barley Gideon Kunda Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-691-11943-4 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-691-11943-0 | 342pp. | HC | $32.95 | |
| Page ix: | "We are also obligated by the ethics of our craft to shield the people who so generously opened their worlds to us from unwanted intrusions. To that end, we have used pseudonyms for the organizations we studies and for the individuals whom we observed and interviewed." |
| This is fine, and most of the company names, at least, are easily recognized as fictitious: Advanced Computers, ChipCo, Raster, UNIX Hardware. However, they aren't thorough about it. Real companies mentioned include General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft. Their informants mention others. Also, the indexing of these organizations and individuals is spotty. I'll mention some instances below. |
| Page 60: | Hayes |
| The modem maker (aka Hayes Microcomputer Products) is not indexed. |
| Page 61: | General Electric |
| Indexed only on page 185. |
| Page 98: | (footnote) "The Noble Foundation has published a useful and concise summary..." |
| S/B "Nobel Foundation". |
| Page 110: | Savant Technologies |
| Only indexed on page 162. |
| Page 157: | (footnote) "Such agreements were, of course, very hard enforce". |
| Missing word: S/B "very hard to enforce". |
| Page 211: | "At one point I was driving a Beamer and that created too much envy." |
| S/B "Beemer". |
| Page 223: | (footnote) Fair Labor Standards Act and National Labor Relations Act |
| These real federal laws are not indexed. |
| Page 241: | SGI |
| Another real company — Silicon Graphics — not indexed. |
| Page 243: | "I mean, as long as you can psyche yourself into the fact that you're going to be working long hours..." |
| S/B "psych". |
| Page 253: | Rational Systems |
| Another real company that is not indexed. |
| Page 255: | "They bragged about their C++ and their PEARL and all these other technologies..." |
| S/B "PERL". |
| Page 255: | "They bragged about their C++ and their PEARL and all these other technologies..." |
| S/B "PERL". |
| Page 255: | "Each of these technologies were all-encompassing, integrated IT systems to which firms were entrusting their various databases." |
| Number error: S/B "was an all-encompassing, integrated IT system". |
| Page 256: | "For example, they moved from one programming language to another or from one database application to another, rather than jumping from one occupational community (say quality analysis) to another (like database programming or systems administration)." |
| Wrong terminology: S/B "(say quality assurance)". |
| Page 280: | TRW |
| Another real company is not indexed. |
| Page 282: | "Glenn Arthur joined with friends he had made when working as a permanent employee for a now defunct knowledge engineering firm to start Expert Support, a collective that actually functioned as a staffing firm." |
| Expert Support is another real company with its own, real Web site. It too is not indexed. |
| Page 302: | "Expert Solutions minimized markups, offered group benefit plans, and had developed a system for spreading income so that no member experienced unpaid periods of downtime." |
| A footnote on this sentence says that Expert Solutions is located in Mountain View, California. That suggests it's real. It is indexed. However, the only firms by that name that Googling turns up are located in West Chester, PA and Australia. Also, Progressive Staffing, mentioned in the same paragraph, is not indexed on page 302 — only on other pages where it appears. |
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