A study of why 52 highly skilled technical contractors accepted contingent employment found that contracting paid better than permanent employment. However, they felt anxiety and estrangement; networks were developed to address needs such as training. Highly skilled contingent workers form a triad with employing companies and intermediaries such…

Twelve technicians and research support specialists employed in two laboratories of a university biotechnology center were observed and interviewed for 1 year to compile data on their job duties, knowledge, and status. Although the university differentiated technician and research support specialist positions across nine pay grades that were…

In a continuation of research on the technical labor force that was initiated in 1990 at a large northeastern university, professionalism among technical workers was examined from an emic perspective. (Emics are conceptual strategies that explain phenomena in terms meaningful to the people being studied, whereas etics explain phenomena in terms…

Between 1950 and 1988, the number of professional and technical workers increased by 282% while the labor force as a whole only increased by 94%. Most persons employed as technicians work on or with reputedly complex technologies. Most work at the empirical interface between a larger production process and the materials on which the process…

Over the past 4 decades, the number of professional and technical workers has increased by 282 percent, and economic forecasts indicate that this trend of rapid growth will increase. The bureaucratization of the professions, expansion and application of scientific knowledge, and technological change have all fueled a "technization" of the work…