We have suggested that an agency at-will contract system will develop for purveyors of specific expertise. This is because: (i) opportunities for expert employees have changed (chapter 1); (ii) organizations develop defence mechanisms which resist change and make them less attractive to specific expert individuals (chapter 2); (iii) some organizational functions such as control and monitoring are less relevant to knowledge-based employees (chapter 3); and (iv) intellectual capital is enhanced with an increase in networks associated with agency at-will contract systems (chapter 4). Together these conspire to encourage the expert employee to move away from traditional organizations towards agencies and systems of at-will contracts. It is from an economic theoretical approach that we add a fifth factor that encourages the punctuated break. This is that the temporal advantages of agency atwill contracts will result in an increase in utility for the expert employee and a qualitative improvement in the expert employee's product.

Temporal control is often reported in the economics of compensation packages as an element that would have little significance to employee/employer relationships. We take a different view and consider this aspect of work critical in the formation of new labour market arrangements. Interpreting temporal control as a marginal benefit for expert employees can, we suggest, lead to an inappropriate analysis of temporal control and the expert employee. We suggest that temporal control is an important aspect of knowledge-based work and make it central in our analysis.