Contractor performance: how good are contingent workers at the professional level?

"Contractors", sometimes called "job shoppers", are temporary workers from an agency "A" who perform professional work at client site "B" under the direction of the client's employees. The authors surveyed 96 managers in six high-technology settings about their overall perceptions of contractor performance, finding that respondents perceived it to rival that of comparable employees. Such perceptions of contractor performance were unaffected by the amount of time the contractor spent in the client workgroup. Also, perceived overall contractor performance was unaffected both by aggregated client measures against coemployment risk and by existence of a forced-departure rule.