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Contingent knowledge workers will play an increasingly important role in organisational success as workers transition in and out of project-based innovation teams with more frequency. Our research finds that collaborators in the contingent, high-skill workforce face uncertainty challenges to their work that are unique from the independent, contingent professionals more often studied. The article proposes a theoretical framework of uncertainty to guide us in understanding collaborative contingent knowledge workers' work experience. Interviews with postdoctoral researchers reveal four findings about the influence of these highly uncertain work environments on collaborative contingent knowledge workers -collaboration isolation, frustrated independence, performance anxiety and internalised blame. Perhaps most concerning is that the workers internalise the negative impacts as personal failings instead of recognising them as consequences of a poorly designed work environment. This study argues for the need to manage and mitigate different sources of uncertainty to avoid creating an unnecessary burden on contingent knowledge workers, and to enable a sustainable, contingent knowledge workforce.

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In his classic work, H. George Frederickson offers a robust call to value anew the spirit of public administration. This was offered not as an abstract treatise but as a reaction to the evolution of the practice of public administration that included institutions and approaches that stretched previous understanding of the field. Much about the constitution of the “spirit of public administration” is left abstract by Frederickson. It is something of a placeholder for the norms, values, and principles that are threatened by the ascendance of “governance.” In this article, the threat of an undermined spirit of administration in a governance era is considered with an attempt at greater specificity and concreteness than previous discussions. To the end of opening a more empirical exploration of the spirit–governance nexus, this article moves away from an either/or position and attempts to distill the highest risks of deterioration of spirit in the provision of public goods.

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