Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

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Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

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Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life A European Perspective

Edited by Egil J. Skorstad Østfold University College, Norway Helge Ramsdal Østfold University College, Norway

© Egil J. Skorstad and Helge Ramsdal 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Egil J. Skorstad and Helge Ramsdal have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Flexible organizations and the new working life : a European perspective 1. Human capital 2. Organizational effectiveness 3. Industrial relations I. Skorstad, Egil J. II. Ramsdal, Helge 658.3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Skorstad, Egil, 1945Flexible organizations and the new working life : a European perspective / by Egil J. Skorstad and Helge Ramsdal. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-7546-7420-7 -- ISBN 978-0-7546-9151-8 (ebook) 1. Hours of labor, Flexible--Europe--Cross-cultural studies. 2. Organizational culture--Europe--Cross-cultural studies. 3. Organizational behavior--Europe--Cross-cultural studies. 4. Quality of work life--Europe--Cross-cultural studies. I. Ramsdal, Helge. II. Title. HD5109.2.E85S56 2009 331.25'724094--dc22  ISBN 978 0 7546 7420 7 eISBN 978 0 7546 9151 8 (ebook)

2008048575

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors   Preface  

1 Introduction   Helge Ramsdal and Egil J. Skorstad 2 The Ambiguity of Flexibility   Egil J. Skorstad

vii iv xi xv

1

17

3 The Impact of Flexibility on Employee Morale and Involvement: Large-Sample Findings for UK Workplaces   Michael Rose

43

4 Whose Flexibility? British Employees’ Responses to Flexible Capitalism   Harriet Bradley

79

5 A Package of Flexibility?   Birgitta Eriksson and Jan Ch. Karlsson 6

7

97

Protected, Firm-Specific, and Scarce: Explanations of Non-Standard Forms of Employment   R. Øystein Strøm

111

Combining Flexibility and Workers’ Motivation: Lessons from a Study on Italian and French Hospitals   Philippe R. Mossé

143

8 Striving for Flexibility, Attaining Resistance: Culture Clashes in the Swedish Rail Industry   Henrietta Huzell

163

9 The Re-Organization of Manufacturing and the Emergence of a Flexible Economy in the UK   Stephen Ackroyd

187

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10 The Quest for Flexibility and Governmental Regulations of Working Life: The Case of the 2005 Norwegian Worker Protection and Working Environment Act   Helge Ramsdal 11 What’s Special About the Nordic Countries? On Flexibility, Globalization and Working Life   Tor Claussen 12

Concluding Remarks: The Complex Dynamism of the Flexible Organization   Egil J. Skorstad

Index  

209

233

257

265

List of Figures

3.1 Number of flexibility practices and level of morale 4.1 Graduate destinations in 2003 6.1 The OECD (1999) ranking of member states according to the establishments’ costs related to individual or collective dismissals  6.2 Total labour force (left hand scale) in 1,000 persons and percentage of women and unemployment (right hand scale) in Norway from 1972 to 2006 6.3 The average working year (left hand scale) and total hours worked (right hand scale) in manufacturing and health in Norway from 1970 to 2004 6.4 Normalized full-time employment in major Norwegian industries from 1970 to 2004 6.5 Total and part-time employment for men and women in manufacturing and the health services in Norway from 1996 to 2007 6.6 Temporary work among men and women – 1,000 persons, from 1996 to 2007  6.7 The percentage of workers engaged in temporary employment in manufacturing, retail, hotels and restaurants (‘rethot’), education and health services in Norway from 1996 to 2007 6.8 The percentage of all and non-agricultural self-employed workers in Norway from 1970 to 2004 8.1 The management perspective and the resistance perspective in relation to change within the domains of legitimacy, restructuring and revaluating

69 93 114

119

121 122

127 131

132 133

172

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List of Tables

3.1 Numerical flexibility: Employers’ use of non-standard contracts, 1998 and 2004 3.2 Numerical flexibility, organizational commitment, perceived workplace relations 3.3 Numerical flexibility: Employers’ use of outsourcing, 1998 and 2004 3.4 Outsourcing, workplace climate and organizational attachment 3.5 Numerical flexibility: Jobs in workplace not guaranteed/exempt from compulsory redundancy and approval of management, perceived workplace relations and organizational commitment 3.6 Temporal flexibility: Overtime working, 1998 and 2004 3.7 Temporal flexibility: Overtime working, workplace climate and organizational attachment 3.8 Temporal flexibility, effect of having a 24/7 work schedule 3.9 Stretched contract working, manager informant agreed/ strongly agreed 3.10 Functional flexibility – Teamwork (definitions for 1998 and 2004, restricted 2004) 3.11 Training for job-switching, workplace climate and organizational attachment 3.12 Mean level (0–6) of largest OUG ‘formally trained’ do other job (fxfunc_trainedojb) 3.13 Actual job switching, workplace climate and organizational attachment (WERS 5 only) 3.14 Scope of flexibility practice in UK workplaces with five or more employees 4.1 Changing proportions of firms reporting usage of different types of flexible working 4.2 Percentage of firms in survey reporting availability of different types of non-standard contractual arrangements 4.3 Income levels by age group 5.1 Workplaces that have different types of flexibility (percentages) 5.2 Types of work environments according to Karasek’s model 5.3 Different types of working conditions at the workplace with various types of flexibility and various aspects of new management (percentages) 5.4 Employees in different types of work environments at flexible and non-flexible workplaces (vertical percentages)

48 50 52 53

54 57 58 59 61 63 65 66 67 68 83 84 92 99 103

104 105



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5.5 Logistic regression analyses of the relationships between class, sex, type of workplace and quality of work environment (odds ratios) 5.6 Common conceptual pairs in research on the ‘new working life’ 6.1 The firm’s evaluation of flexible manning practices given labour flexibility and variability 6.2 The firm’s evaluation of flexible manning practices given labour flexibility and skill obsolescence 6.3 The female employment rate in EU15 and some selected countries 6.4 The male employment rate in EU15 and some selected countries 6.5 Total and part-time employment among men and women, the percentage of part-time employment, and the percentage of short part-time and total part-time employment 6.6 The percentage of part-time employment in Norwegian industries, 1996 to 2004 6.7 Per cent of part-time employment rate in Norway 1996 to 2004 distributed by gender and type of establishment 6.8 Female part-time employment as per cent of total female employment in some European countries 6.9 Men’s part-time employment as per cent of total male employment in some European countries 6.10 Correlations between temporary employment levels in manufacturing, retail, hotels and restaurants, education, and health services 6.11 The percentage of full-time employees working overtime (per cent), by industry 6.12 The relationship between labour participation and the extent of part-time employment in the European economic area 1993 to 2004 – Fixed effects estimation 6.13 Total full-time and part-time employment (1,000 persons) and part-time employment as primary activity as a percentage of total part-time employment 6.14 Total employment, part-time employment as per cent of total employment, and part-time work distributed by different age groups 6.15 The number of under-employed (1,000 persons) in total and in different part-time and full-time employment categories  6.16 The number of extra hours under-employed workers in different part-time and full-time employment categories would like to work 7.1 Main case studies data

106 107 116 118 123 124

125 126 128 130 130

133 134

137

138 138 139 140 151

List of Contributors

Stephen Ackroyd is Professor of Organizational Analysis at Lancaster University Management School. He is a fellow of the British Academy of Management, a founder member of the Society for Advanced Management Studies and a member of the editorial board of some of the leading British journals in the fields of management and organization. Ackroyd’s current research is concerned with the activities of the largest British companies engaged in manufacturing. Recent books include: Realist Perspectives on Management and Organisation (2000) (written and edited with Steve Fleetwood); The Organisation of Business (2002) and The New Managerialism and the Public Service Professions, Palgrave, 2004 (with Ian Kirkpatrick). Most recently he co-edited and co-authored with R. Batt and others The Oxford Handbook of Work and Organisations. This book was published by Oxford University Press in 2005. Harriet Bradley is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol, and is a specialist in the study of women’s employment. Her broader research interests are the sociology of gender, feminism, industrial relations and the sociology of work, along with a general interest in social divisions and inequalities. Recently her work has focused especially on issues of youth and employment. She is currently involved in a study of young ethnic minority workers in the old and new industries and a study for the Equal Opportunities Commission on work cultures and ethnic minority women. She has spent time in Norway and hopes to develop comparative work on gender and employment. Tor Claussen is Professor of Leadership, Management and Working life at Østfold University College. He is also a Head of Research, Business development at IRIS research, Stavanger. His specific fields of interest relate to organizational analysis, working life research, classic social science and philosophical issues. He has currently published an article reconsidering the basic position in critical theory and critics of positivism in The Norwegian Journal of Philosophy (3, 2006). With Kjersti Ørvig he has published a book on social dilemmas in modern society (Sosiale dilemmaer i det moderne, Unipub 2003). In addition he has written a book on classics in the working life tradition and their relevance in discussions and challenges in contemporary working life (Arbeidslivets klassikere og dagens arbeidsliv, Unipub 2001). Birgitta Eriksson is Associate Professor at the Department of Working Life Science, Karlstad University, Sweden. Her research interests include small businesses, organizations and working conditions.

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Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

Henrietta Huzell is a Lecturer in Working Life Science and a research fellow at CTF – Service Research Centre at Karlstad University. Her teaching is mainly on organization theory and labour market issues in the European Union. Her research interests include resistance among workers, public sector restructuring and aesthetic labour. Jan Ch. Karlsson is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Working Life Science, Karlstad University, Sweden, and adjunct professor at Østfold University College, Norway. His publications are concerned with the concept of work, modern work organization, class and gender in everyday life, and critical realism and methodology in the social sciences. He is co-author of Explaining Society: An Introduction to Critical Realism in the Social Sciences (2002), Gender Segregation. Divisions of Work in Post-Industrial Welfare States (2005), and Flexibility and Stability in Working Life (2006). Philippe R. Mossé is an economist, Directeur de Recherche at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He has been Visiting Professor at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan and research fellow at Berkeley University. He was, until 2008, the Director of the LEST (Aix en Provence). His main research areas and topics are Health Economics, Hospital management and Labour economics. He is co-author of L’hôpital et la profession infirmière, une comparaison France Japon (Seli Arslan Publisher, 2008). Email: [email protected]. Helge Ramsdal is Professor of Political Science and Organization Theory at Østfold University College. He has held positions at the University of Bergen and as a senior researcher at Østfold Research Foundation. His research has focussed on developments in the public sector, particularly the relationship between professional work and managerial reforms in the health and social sectors. His current research is concerned with developments in mental health service provision. Recent publications include Psychic healthcare in the community. Some organisational and theoretical views (in Norwegian, 2004), Squaring the Circle: Psychic Healthcare Workers Meet Competitive Tendering (in Norwegian with Gunnar Vold Hansen, 2005), and Privatizations from Within – on the Amalgation of Public and Private Modes of Organisation (in Norwegian with Egil J. Skorstad, 2004). He is now participating in the SHP project on ‘An inclusive or excluding working life?’ financed by the Norwegian Research Council. Email: helge. [email protected]. Michael Rose is a Professorial Fellow at the University of Bath and Chair of the Board of the journal Work, Employment and Society. His doctoral research covered the history of industrial sociology in Britain, France and the US; his later work uses case-studies, oral history, participant observation, and secondary analysis of large data sets. He is a consultant to trade unions, companies, and government agencies. His current research is on the relations between skills, work orientations, and

List of Contributors

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careers. His best known books are Industrial Behaviour – Research and Control and Reworking the Work Ethic. Email: [email protected]. Egil J. Skorstad is Professor of Organizational Studies at the Østfold University College and adjunct professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). His main research include issues such as autonomy and democracy at work, technology and organization, flexibility and new patterns of organization such as lean production, flexible specialization, and so on and their impact on working conditions. His recent books include Forms of Production in the Twentieth Century (in Norwegian, 1999), Organisational Forms: Continuity or Change (in Norwegian, 2002) and Privatization from Within – on the Amalgation of Public and Private Modes of Organisation (in Norwegian with Helge Ramsdal, 2004). Most recently one of his articles on lean production is reprinted in Huw Beynon and Theo Nichols, The Fordism of Ford and Modern Management. Fordism and Post-Fordism (Edward Elgar Publishing 2006). Email: [email protected]. R. Øystein Strøm is Associate Professor of Financial Economics at Østfold University College. His main research activity is in corporate governance issues, mainly dealing with the role of the board. Recently he published the report ‘The value-creating board: Theory and evidence’ (BI research report No. 8, 2005). In the field of industrial economics he has published ‘Governance mechanisms in the liquid packaging industry’ in C. Karlsson, B. Johannson and R.R. Stough, Industrial Clusters and Inter-Firm Networks. His current interest is the effects of co-determination (employee board representation) upon firm performance, job growth, and labour productivity.

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Preface This book examines the dynamics of flexibility in organizational settings. Since the 1980s flexibility has evolved into a new orthodoxy for both private and public organizations. The idea of ‘flexible organizations’ is an inherent part of ‘the new working life’ discourse, embraced by politicians, bussiness leaders and researchers. Although the concept of flexible organizations is both ambiguous and contested, it has nevertheless become a catalyst of scientific research globally, not least in the European countries. This book is one of the results of a research project on organizational change, flexibility and working conditions in Norway. The main questions raised in the study are related to the increasing frequency and scope of changes occurring in organizational settings and the impact they may have on the employees affected. The changes studied are mainly confined to attempts at increasing organizational flexibility, both within the private as well as in the public sector. At the end of August 2005, we arranged a three-day workshop in Fredrikstad, Norway, involving invited scholars from France, Sweden and the United Kingdom to discuss questions related to the present project. Originally, the main intention of the arrangement was to glean comments on our research agenda and its design as well as creative ideas for further work; the question of a joint publication was not part of the original plan. During the workshop, however, the idea of such a product took form and was subsequently proposed and approved. The present publication, therefore, is the result of this approval. Several people have contributed to this book in addition to the authors themselves. In particular, we are deeply grateful for the qualified, constructive and committed contribution from Karen Patrick Knutsen and Frode Lundemo to our editorial endeavours in producing this book. We are also, of course, most grateful for the contributions from the authors themselves. The workshop itself turned out to be a very stimulating and pleasant experience as was the editing process that followed. All our contributors responded to our frequent questions, demands and deadlines in a friendly, fast and reliable way. Because of this the editing proved to be a unique and overwhelmingly positive experience; we are looking forward to profiting further from a very stimulating network of researchers. We are indebted to the Research Council of Norway for the funding that enabled us to experience this very positive and constructive collaboration. We are also very grateful for the positive response and support from Ashgate as well as for the constructive and helpful comments given by its two anonymous referees. Egil J. Skorstad and Helge Ramsdal Fredrikstad, August 2008

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Chapter 1

Introduction Helge Ramsdal and Egil J. Skorstad

The question of flexibility in organizational settings has become increasingly important during the last couple of decades. In particular it has been launched almost as a panacea for western producers facing growing challenges from new and highly competitive producers emerging on the industrial scene. Increased flexibility, it is said, will be conducive to the necessary pliability and dynamism of western establishments, something which is imperative in their new and turbulent environments. Those who learn the art of operating in a dynamic and flexible way may succeed; those who do not will face a gloomy future. The task before us in this particular publication is not to challenge these and similar statements about changes in the competitive environment. What we will do, however, is discuss the alleged proliferation of flexibility practices in order to master this environment and the probable impact such practices may have on working life in general and working conditions in particular. This is in itself a challenging task, not least because of the great controversy surrounding the question. The debate over the possible impacts of flexibility in this respect is still very heated and is, as Michael Rose points out later in this book, reminiscent of the earlier stages of the debate following Harry Braverman’s seminal work from 1974 on the degradation of work in the twentieth century. On the one hand there are those who understand flexibility in purely positive terms (Hammer and Champy 1995; Schonberger 1986; Voss and Clutterbuck 1989; Womack et al. 1990). Flexibility, they say, is not exclusively for the benefit of the enterprise. It is equally beneficial to the employees. To them it brings varied and challenging work, empowerment and improved employability; the changing environment is in itself conducive to the emergence of new forms of organization that are dependent on the skills and discretion of their employees. According to these advocates, the comparative advantages of traditional Taylorism or Fordism are definitively considered to be outdated. We have entered an era where changes are deemed necessary and ordinary employees are considered to be among the main beneficiaries in these processes. On the other hand there are those who argue against this position. These opponents tend to see flexibility mainly in negative terms while claiming that it will lead to more intensified work, less control and more precarious working conditions in general (Burchell et al. 2002; Quinlan et al. 2001; Sennett 1998). Such consequences, it is argued, emerge as logical results of increased competition and the changing nature of the environment in general. Increased competition, for



Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

instance, is met by lean regimes where the quality of working time has become more important than before. Diminishing predictability in turn compels companies to let go of traditional regimes characterized by long term commitments regarding the duration and nature of work as well as its associated benefits, such as acceptable pay levels, regulated working hours, compensation insurance, protection and support of a union, pension systems, etc. In this context, it is argued, ordinary employees would be wise not to count on a life-long career with a single employer. Workers may realize that what was usually taken for granted has vanished or been transformed into an unreliable construction (Bauman 2001). Finally, there are those who reject both these standpoints while maintaining that there is nothing new as far as flexibility policies are concerned. Some of them claim that part of the working population has always been subjected to marginalization in the sense that they have had to put up with short term contracts, low pay and repetitive, routine work (Pollert 1988). Others claim that the purported massive quest for increased flexibility is a greatly exaggerated phenomenon, at least when it comes to trends regarding the use of non-standard employment, such as parttime work, temporary work, working from home or self-employment (Gallie et al. 1998; Karlsson and Eriksson 2001). The present publication is part of a research project where we have set out to examine some of the questions raised above: Is it possible to reveal particular trends regarding changes in the adoption of flexibility practices in organizational settings? Is there any evidence indicating that the question of flexibility has become more important or not, or has there been little change in this matter? And if changes have occurred; how have they affected working conditions, for better or for worse? These questions pertain to both the private and the public sectors, and are particularly portentous in times when public enterprises are expected to behave as if they were private undertakings and subjected to the logic of the market. To discuss these and similar questions related to flexibility we invited scholars from France, the United Kingdom and Sweden to Norway in August 2005 for a three-day workshop. Most of the presentations from this workshop are included in the present publication. In the following we will give a short presentation of each of them. The contradictory statements about flexibility and its alleged impact on working conditions outlined above form the point of departure for Egil J. Skorstad in Chapter 2. One important explanation of these contradictions, it is argued, might be found in the concept of flexibility itself. The main point is that the concept is conceived of in a myriad of ways, comprising almost everything that may lead to the desired quality. Flexibility may, for instance, just as easily be the result of dispositions made by autonomous employees as the result of behaviour enforced upon subordinates through administrative, technical or social control. Such different bases of flexibility may, of course, lead to contradictory consequences for those who are affected. It is therefore not surprising that there may be diverging descriptions of how working life is changing when the causes of change may be so diverse.

Introduction



The proposed solution to this problem in this particular context is outlined in the following way. First the general term of flexibility is replaced by ‘organizational flexibility’, indicating that the focus is on the pliability of the organization and not, for instance, on the range of possibilities offered to employees as to where, when and how they may work. Second, the nature of this flexibility may be affected in several ways, and the following four main dimensions are considered to be the most important ones. The first concerns ‘employment practices’; that is the use of nonstandard forms of employment such as part-time and temporary employment, hired labour from hire agencies, self-employed workers or subcontractors. The second dimension involves ‘organizational structure’, indicating that it is the division of work, the distribution of skills and authority, the nature of the technology involved, the character of communication, etc. that may have decisive impact on how the organization acts. The third dimension concerns ‘culture’; whether there is a climate characterized by opposition and resistance or by consent and commitment in the workplace. Finally, different ways of cooperation or collaboration between several individual organizations may influence the level of flexibility of each individual firm. Depending on its nature a ‘network’ may be equally beneficial to all the participants in a symmetrical way, as in the case of the ideal-typical industrial district (Best 1990), or it may mainly benefit a minority at the expense of the majority within the actual construction. In this case the nature of the network illustrates the importance of the constituting mechanisms when it comes to its impact upon the flexibility of the organization, and this is an important point to note in relation to the other three dimensions as well. The possibility of improving flexibility through employment strategies may, for instance, be heavily restricted by laws and regulations. Attempts at improving flexibility through structural arrangements may be hampered or facilitated by the qualities of the employees as well as the nature of the technology. Attempts at improving it through culture might be dependent on the level of trust produced and reproduced through experience. In a corresponding way the dimensions themselves are considered interdependent. Desired behaviour in accordance with structural provisions may, for instance, prove to be unattainable if the culture of the organization is dominated by reluctance or resistance. The level of commitment may in turn be affected by structural qualities, such as the opportunity for employee participation. Extensive use of non-standard employment may hamper the ability to reorganize at short notice. And extensive outsourcing followed by operations through asymmetrical networking may create a climate of resistance. Thus the relationship between organizational flexibility and its constituting mechanisms turns out to be very complex. Because of the interdependence of these mechanisms, attempts to change one of them in order to achieve improved flexibility may contrarily prove to have the opposite effect due to the unintended impact it may have on some of the others. The rest of the presentations in this book are organized according to the main dimensions outlined above. In Chapter 3, Michael Rose gives us a general, up to date presentation from the United Kingdom regarding non-standard employment



Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

while asking how widespread these practices actually are in this country, and what the moral consequences of such practices might be. While noting that the heated debate referred to above is marked by a lack of empirical evidence, Rose sets out to disclose such evidence, at least when it comes to the case of the United Kingdom. The present analysis is based upon the Workplace Employment Relations Surveys of 1998 (WERS 4) and 2004 (WERS 5). These form part of a long running linked series of UK enquiries on UK management–employee relations. A preparatory work by Rose (2008) enabled a more precise empirical reference to be provided for defining associations between types of flexible employment practices and the outlook and morale of employees affected by them. The chapter adopts well-established distinctions between numerical (or ‘contractual’) flexibility, temporal flexibility, and functional flexibility. The UK Workplace Employment Relations Surveys of 1998 and 2004 (WERS 4, WERS 5) provide large sample data on the development of flexible employment practices and working procedures in Britain in the period from 1993 to 2004, covering the basics of numerical and functional flexibility in British workplaces. They are also sufficiently detailed to allow a few grounded inferences about the overall philosophy of management followed in the employing organization. The two workplace surveys were accompanied on each occasion by an employee survey providing linked data on employee subjectivity (work attitudes, sense of well-being) in the years 1998 and 2004 for two very large employee samples. In his detailed analysis Rose examines to which extent different types of flexible employment practices are adopted, and establishes a profile of temporal, numerical, and functional flexibility for UK workplaces in the early 21st Century. The analysis also shows the kind of effect flexibility practices, both individually and in consort, have on aspects of employee subjectivity relevant to workplace life. The analysis shows that virtually all UK workplaces with five or more employees now utilize at least two flexibility practices, and almost half utilize five or more. However, just as the scope of flexibility (number of practices adopted) varies greatly, so does the span (coverage in terms of employees) of application of any given practice. On the whole, flexibility in the UK emerges as probably having a lower incidence than might be thought: functional flexibility almost certainly does (Rose 2008). Whether they are regarded as modest in scale or not, nearly all distinct flexibility practices modify employee experience of the workplace employee relations climate, approval of line management, and organizational commitment. Together, these effects are clear and distinct in both WERS 4 (1998) and WERS 5 (2004). They are overwhelmingly negative; they are statistically significant, and for the most part highly so. In Chapter 4, Harriet Bradley sums up findings from several research projects dealing with the impact of ‘flexible capitalism’ on working life. Her aim is to demonstrate the different meanings and different implications of ‘flexibility’ for different groups of people. Bradley refers to the ‘flexibility’ debate over the extent and implications for working life of non-standard employment. This debate

Introduction



has especially revolved around the issue of part-time work as an indicator of the occurrence of ‘non-standard work’. Bradley argues that the fact that Britain now has the longest average working hours in Europe should be seen as another indication of the negative implications of non-standard work. Bradley illustrates how different attitudes to flexibility are represented within and between employers and managers, unions and employees. In many ways her findings, based upon in-depth interviews with representatives of these groups, reflect the ‘ambiguity of flexibility’, in the sense that all the usual arguments about the positive and negative aspects of flexibility in working life are represented within each of these groups. Among employers and managers there is universal support for the general idea of ‘flexibility’, yet on the other hand there is scepticism towards non-standard work, short-term contracts, part-time work and job-sharing in some sectors. For instance, in workplaces requiring more skilled and responsible workers, the problems of accommodation, coordination and discipline seem to leave managers sceptical towards ‘flexible manning’. Generally, Bradley et al. found that employers and managers (who do not necessarily share the same interests or views regarding for instance coordination and day-to-day work) seem to be in favour of numerical and functional flexibility, but not in favour of flexi-time. Particularly, multi-skilling is seen as a strategy for overcoming the negative implications of absenteeism, emergencies and changes in output. Among trade unions, functional flexibility and especially multi-skilling, are often regarded as a threat to custom and practice. Likewise, trade unions are generally sceptical to the erosion of the traditional work week, and protest against part-time, sub-contracted and temporary work. They often consider flexibility schemes as measures which will foster individualism and consequently undermine collectivism in industrial relations. These attitudes are, however, charged with being embedded in the traditions of male workers in manufacturing industries, and thus do not reflect the interests of young, female employees, working in the dynamic modern economy. Still, strategies of resistance against those aspects of flexible work life that are regarded to have negative effects upon working life seem to have union support in compliance with the assumed interests of employees. On the other hand, those aspects of flexibility, for example, non-standard, familyfriendly employment seem to create dissonance between unions and employees who see advantages in these arrangements. When it comes to employees, the interviews are primarily with young adults. For them, the prime meaning of ‘flexibility’ is ‘flexi-time’. For young women with small children, and for young male adults, flexi-time is generally considered as positive – some consider it a ‘godsend’ – a perfect way of adapting working life to private life. The opinions on flexi-time, according to Bradley, reflect new attitudes to work and life among young people. Here, a life-long job is not considered probable or desirable. Thus, young people seem to have adopted ‘the new rules of the game’ in flexible capitalism.



Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

Again, Bradley’s discussion contrasts the divergence between the subjective opinions of individual employees on one hand, and the ‘objective’ data about the economic and social situation for the respondents taking part in the study on the other. Here, the respondents generally have low incomes and bad housing, and the work they are doing often does not correspond with their formal education. Bradley’s discussion invites us to see flexibility as a complex and ambiguous phenomenon, leading to divergent attitudes among the actors in working life. In particular, her discussion reflects the dilemmas of ‘subjective’ attitudes on the one hand, and the objective data about economic and social relations on the other. One possible interpretation of Bradley’s findings is that younger people tend to concur more with the rhetoric of the ‘here-and-now’ advantages of flexibility, while their long-term economic and social interests are under-communicated. In their chapter, Birgitta Eriksson and Jan Ch. Karlsson report from a study in Sweden where the issue of flexibility as ‘a new package’ in working life – differing from the old ‘all-in-one system’ of Taylorism, Fordism or bureaucracy – is addressed. The study revolves around some general statements about the new working life: that all workplaces are now flexible, and that the work environment of flexible workplaces is better for all employees than that of non-flexible environments. Well aware that these statements represent a simplification of the flexibility discourse, the authors suggest that the hypotheses tested empirically should be formulated in a more dynamic way – that there has been a development which has increased the number of flexible workplaces during the last decade. In their empirical analysis, Eriksson and Karlsson explicitly take the Atkinson model as their point of departure, and particularly the idea of a core and peripheral division between employees. Here, three types of flexibility are identified and operationalized: functional, numerical and financial flexibility. The idea of a ‘package’ of flexibility in working life enhances the developments of all these types of flexibility at the same time, and a flexible workplace according to this thesis possesses all three types of flexibility. The data were collected in 1994 and replicated in 2002, thus allowing for diachronic comparisons where the development of flexibility at workplace levels is analysed statistically. The analysis indicates that functional flexibility is the most common type. ‘Functional flexibility’ is measured in terms of the ‘firm-specific competence’ required and the occurrence of ‘on the job training’. More than 60 per cent of the workplaces studied reported this to be the case. When it comes to numerical flexibility, 70 per cent of the firms studied hired temporary workers, but only in a very limited fashion. Financial flexibility, operationalized as different wage systems for core and periphery employees, is only found in one fourth of the workplaces. The conclusions can also be stated negatively in relation to the flexibility hypothesis; the flexibility ‘package’ statement ‘does not seem to belong to the accounts of the new working life that have a sound empirical basis, and … the flexibility hypothesis does not hold’. The empirical findings thus indicate that there has not been a trend towards more ‘flexible’ workplaces.

Introduction



‘The good environment’ hypothesis loses some relevance as the main conclusion above makes it more difficult to compare ‘flexible’ and ‘non-flexible’ workplaces. However, through the elimination of financial flexibility, it becomes possible to develop an analytical approach which rests upon a model of the work environment on the one hand, and the Atkinson model of flexibility on the other. In the data, there is, however, no significant connection between the two models, indicating that there is no correlation between the quality of the work environment and the degree of ‘flexibility’ in workplaces. In other words, the analysis does not support the claim that flexible workplaces are better for employees than nonflexible. In contrast, the authors find that the ‘old’ variables of class and sex are more influential in creating good and bad work environments than the flexible and non-flexible organization of the so-called new working life. The extent of non-standard employment in Norwegian enterprises is examined by R. Øystein Strøm in Chapter 6. In his discussion, Strøm considers non-standard employment mainly in relation to regulatory regimes governing work relations, and the importance of firm-specific skills and labour shortages as measured by the rate of employment. In this context, non-standard employment is expected to be widespread when regulations are limited and the employers’ demands for firmspecific skills are low. The opposite is expected when regulations are extensive and the skills in demand are of a firm-specific kind. The rate of employment is supposed to have a tonic effect; the higher the rate of employment, the more use of non-standard employment arrangements. These hypotheses are supported by the empirical evidence presented in the chapter. Compared to countries in Western Europe, Norway scores very high on statistics regarding the rate of part-time compared to full-time employment. Temporary employment on the other hand is not widespread. The level of selfemployment is low and the use of overtime varies highly within industry, as does the utilization of part-time and temporary workers. Both practises are widespread in the public sector and in some parts of the private sector, such as the retail, hotel and restaurant industries. In these cases there is a gender effect as well; the statistics show that the share of part-time work among women is almost treble that of the corresponding share of part-time work among men. As with overtime the pattern is unmistakable; industries with a low proportion of part-time and temporary workers have a high proportion of employees working overtime, and vice versa. There is upon first examination little evidence in Strøm’s material which justifies unambiguous conclusions about particular trends towards more flexible employment practises in the Norwegian context. Part-time work among women for instance, is indeed extensive, ranking high in comparison to rates in other European countries, but this has been the case for the last decade. Because of this it might of course be argued that the lacking impetus towards increasing part-time employment is due to the high incidence of this type of employment to begin with; perhaps there is no need for more part-timers when the number already is as high as it is? Strøm argues correspondingly in discussing the practice regarding temporary



Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

employment. The low percentage of this kind of labour in the manufacturing sector is for instance explained by the combined effects of the demand for firmspecific skills and the relatively low degree of dismissal protection in this industry. In contrast, a much stronger protection against dismissal in the public sector is used to explain the overrepresentation of temporary employees in this part of the economy. In his chapter, Helge Ramsdal examines how issues related to the flexibility discourse are addressed in the political process of the reformed Norwegian Worker Protection and Working Environment act of 1977 which was passed in Parliament in June and December 2005. The passing of the act represents the end result of a ten year consultative process, and caused political controversy on a level not usually found in the relative tranquility of Norwegian political life. At the outset, the dissension followed a right wing/‘neo-liberalist’ – left wing/‘interventionist’ division. The controversy accordingly centred on familiar issues such as the extent to which, and how, state regulation should relate to changes in international markets and new modes of work, and the way these changes are associated with the ‘inevitable globalization’ discourse. As is shown in the chapter, this is, however, a much too simple interpretation of the dilemmas facing law makers encountering the issues of globalization and flexibility. The Norwegian debate should first and foremost be viewed with the traditional, strong regimentation of labour relations in the country as a frame of reference. In accordance with the ideas of the prototypical Scandinavian welfare state there is a strong regulatory regime of worker protection. The 1977 act that was to be reformed, represents a highpoint in workers’ protection, with strict regulations concerning work hours, temporary work, hiring and firing, and psycho-social relations at workplace levels. Interestingly, the initiative to change the law in order to make it amenable to the ‘new’ challenges of ‘globalization’ and ‘flexibility’ was taken by the unions and a Labour government. In the ten-year period that followed, shifting Centrist, Centrist-Right and Labour – left governments related to the process in different ways. In terms of political science and theories of governance, two intertwined questions were addressed in the process: ‘What should the state do?’ which relates to the level of regulation, and ‘What can the state do?’ which relates to the issues of government control and implementation capabilities. During the process, the prevailing political focus gradually became more complex and ambiguous on both these questions. In contrast with the initial phase, this chapter indicates that the way these issues were addressed gradually modified the one-dimensional ‘neo-liberalist’ – ‘interventionist’ conceptualization of the debate. In general terms, there was agreement among the political parties to begin with that ‘globalization’, ‘flexibility’ and new modes of work were inherent aspects of the modern capitalist economy that had some advantages and some disadvantages for working conditions. While the right-wing political actors wanted to deregulate, the Social Democrats/leftists wanted to maintain a strong regulatory regime. Still, a ‘social policy’ argument concerning strategies aimed at

Introduction



avoiding worker exclusion from the labour market created a bridge between the opposing camps of left and right. Thus, the idea of relatively strong regulation and a predominantly optimistic approach to the governability of working life had strong support. However, during the process, the dominant ideas about what the state should do gradually shifted: the positive normative connotations of globalization and flexibility were replaced by critical connotations, and there was a belief that strong regulation of working life should be upheld. Furthermore the ‘globalization’ discourse became a limited discourse, in which the crux was nonstandard employment, particularly the (de-)regulation of temporary work. In the debate over what the state can do, the focus changed over time from an emphasis on frame laws and indirect governance – which were regarded as conducive to the advancement of globalization and flexible organizations – to the earlier, direct, detailed, regulation of the 1977 act. In December 2005 the new Labour – left government concluded this process by withdrawing the act formulated by the Centrist-Right government just six months before. However, although Norwegian working life is strongly regulated by legal means, the reorganization of public and private organizations still makes workplaces opt for flexibility, in much the same way as other western economies. These changes are obviously not easily contained by legal regulation alone. In Chapter 7, Philippe R. Mossé addresses the political and theoretical issues of flexibility based on a comparative study of Italian and French hospital organizations. The theoretical approach is embedded in the LEST tradition of ‘the societal effect theory’ originating from the influential study of Marc Maurice, François Sellier and Jean-Jacques Silvestre (1982). Mossé’s discussion is thus in line with new institutionalism, in which societal contexts and national peculiarities are taken into account in explaining the implications of organizational changes. The paper illustrates the fruitful combination of work life studies at a micro level and the political science and ‘transformation’ perspectives of organization theory in understanding the processes of change taking place in ‘flexibility’ reform strategies. The chapter reports from a three-year study of flexibility reform policies in the health sector of the two countries, showing how these policies were implemented and how they were experienced and perceived by management and employees at the hospital level. The overall reform measures in the two countries are strikingly embedded in the universal ideas of New Public Management. At some distance, these reforms seem similar to those of other European countries, including the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. Here, rationalization, contracting and flexibility in service provision are key words. The paper illuminates, however, that when these ideas are introduced, peculiarities in the history of the organization of health sector policies and present-day societal contexts transform the application of universal concepts at national and organizational levels. Within the broad concept of New Public Management hospital reform, there seem to be paradoxes and contradictions in the implementation process. Some of these are shared by the two countries in the study: On the one hand, the

10

Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

involvement and participation of employees and professional groups were key elements in the rationalization process. On the other hand, workloads and work flexibility increased. Here, neo-Taylorist administrative techniques concerning quality assurance processes and control measures were important. The main objective of the study was to explain the way tensions in this area were addressed at the workplace level, comparing six hospitals which were equally distributed between the two countries. In our context, the findings relating to ‘flexibility’ issues are particularly interesting. Leaving the common features of work intensification and control referred to above aside here, the findings in the two countries differ significantly. The findings indicate that when employee participation and training takes place, professionals embrace functional flexibility as a means of achieving rationalization and increased productivity. The study shows how in the French hospitals, nurses undertook ever more bureaucratic and clerical work, leaving patient care to assistant nurses, while in Italian hospitals (and in the private French one) assistant nurses gained more training enabling them to undertake new tasks imposed by the new ‘flexibility’ regime. This reduced the number of short-term contracts and at the same time extended the tasks of the assistant nurses so that bureaucratic work was not exclusively a nurse responsibility. Thus, in accordance with the new institutionalism approach, the historical traditions of nurses’ (and assistant nurses’) education and task distribution in the two countries are regarded as primary explanations for the different outcomes of functional flexibility strategies. One paradox of reform strategies is that while professional practices are becoming increasingly complex and interconnected in networks with other societal actors within the health sector field, the formal institutions of conflict resolution have been inherited from the time when hospitals were ‘closed institutions’. In effect, as these institutions diverge between Italy and France, so does the accordance between strategies for flexibility at the hospital level and the degree of employee influence and autonomy in the implementation process of hospital reforms. The empirical findings indicate that in spite of the universality and complexity of reforms, there still seems to be a path dependency that can be identified in the strategies for flexibility, and that there is a ‘real consistency’ in each country between flexibility strategies, industrial relations and the impacts upon working conditions at the workplace level. In Chapter 8, Henrietta Huzell discusses organizational culture and the potential impact it may have on flexibility. She illustrates this by summarizing some of the main findings from a study of attempts at reorganizing parts of the Swedish Railway System, the Swedish National Track Authorities. In this case the reorganization has followed the dominant logic pervading western organizational life in general during the last couple of decades: the overriding belief in market mechanisms as the optimal way of regulating organizational behaviour. Based on a large number of in-depth interviews, Huzell shows how management and ordinary employees differ in their views about both the proclaimed necessity as well as the potential consequences of these changes. Managements subscribe to the logic

Introduction

11

indicated above; that growing competition and customer demands make change imperative, and that change must bring about a full-fledged, flexible, customeroriented organization that can replace the traditional one which is characterized as bureaucratic, rigid, alienating and unable to satisfy contemporary demands because of employees’ lack of skills and qualifications. This transformation is to be accomplished through the implementation of networks and process-oriented, flexible teams operating and staffed in accordance with emerging demands, supported by information and knowledge transmitted through networks based on ICT. Furthermore, individual attitudes, skills and qualities in general have to be changed. Employees operating in the original context were considered by management to be too passive, too rigid, too dependant and too united in their approach towards work. What is needed in the new structure is referred to as ‘the responsible co-worker’ who is independent, empowered, flexible, proactive, business-minded and skilful enough to meet the demands of the customer. The employees, on the other hand, disagree with both the diagnosis and the remedies recommended by their superiors. In their opinion, the management’s arguments for change are fictitious; the real motives behind their proposals are deemed to be familiar and traditional; further rationalization through downsizing and more efficient deployment of manpower according to current operational demands. They are also worried about the consequences regarding working conditions, social support and railway safety in general. Questions related to safety, for instance, used to be a collective responsibility, taught, discussed and shared among colleagues in a stable arrangement where peers might support each other when necessary. This has changed in dramatic ways, mainly because of the high turn-over of team-members which has had negative effects on the time and stability workers need to become sufficiently familiar with their co-workers in a professional sense. As a result, the management’s initiatives have been met with scepticism and resistance, and the irony of it all is that the strategy chosen by management to attain improved flexibility has proved to have the opposite effect. Employees are not willing to comply with the logic of the new solutions; they consider the changes not only to be detrimental to working conditions, but to the reproduction and distribution of skills, to safety and to services to the general public. Consequently they find it legitimate to reject the management’s demands for a docile and pliable workforce. Stephen Ackroyd widens the perspective in Chapter 9 in the sense that he focuses on what he refers to as ‘flexible economic systems’. Discussions about organizational flexibility should not be confined to considerations about mechanisms at one particular level, be it group, organization or the societal level in general. Flexibility at different levels interrelates in complex ways. In his chapter, Ackroyd addresses issues related to the reorganization of manufacturing and the emergence of a flexible economy in the UK. In particular, his contribution points to the issue of organizational levels in the analysis of flexibility: that development at plant level and ownership level needs to be analysed as different aspects of flexible economic

12

Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

systems. The flexibility of the British manufacturing sector as it has now emerged has two dimensions, he claims. One is the new form of organization at plant level, which involves the use of relatively unskilled labour in self-organizing teams or ‘cells’. Each cell can itself be re-organized to produce a variety of closely related products. In addition, the costs of the operation can be calculated in detail and consequently the economic viability of the operation can be accurately calculated at any time. The ability to shut down or open up production capacity is also possible at rather short notice. Also, the traditional hold of the trade unions over some aspects of the labour supply and deployment has been undermined during this development. The traditional way of training and recruiting skilled labour is no longer utilized. The traditional demarcations between different types of skilled worker have disappeared, as have the preferential rates of pay and conditions for such employees. In their place we have workgroups which share tasks and skills in production. The skills required to perform well in self-organized cells, may be considerable, but they are not certified and are not transferable from job to job and do not command premium wages. At the same time disciplinary pressure is applied to such jobs by the ever-present threat that the employment itself may be terminated if work-performance does not meet expectations. Ackroyd then turns to a discussion of the second dimension of flexibility in manufacturing – the acquisition of considerable structural flexibility at the level of business group. This involves the willingness of strategic managers to adjust the size and composition of the whole construction by buying and selling businesses, finding cheaper sources by outsourcing supplies, or offshoring services and adjusting the size of the domestic workforce to match. Many, if not most British manufacturing firms today are owned and controlled by large business groups, and these have business goals and objectives of their own. He maintains that such firms are intent on the development of quite long-term trading relationships based on contracting which is the main mode of regulation between parties within supply chains. But such contracts suspend market relations for their duration and are often not equally beneficial to all parties. Thus, despite the rhetorical appeal of the importance of market relationships and the emphasis on the importance of competition which pervades public discourse today, in some obvious ways market relations are receding in favour of medium term relationships based on asymmetrical contracts. Hence what is in evidence is not a movement from hierarchy to market so much as the emergence of characteristic new forms of governance in which large firms extend their influence over wide areas of economic activity. The relationships between flexibility, globalization and work life underpin the discussion presented in most of the chapters in this book. In his chapter, Tor Claussen discusses these relationships explicitly with reference to the political and scientific debate. In particular, he refers to the ‘great transformation’ of globalization processes, and how the relationship between globalization and flexibility has been an important aspect in the debates over new trends in working life. First, the interconnection between ‘globalization’ and ‘flexibility’ is particularly important in neo-liberalist theories of economic development. Here, the argument goes that

Introduction

13

low-cost counties in the Third World have a competitive advantage due to the high extent of numerical flexibility, while on the other hand, high-cost countries in the Western world need to deregulate and increase organizational flexibility in order to improve competitiveness when the movement of capital is regarded as almost unrestricted. Globalization, it is claimed, will therefore be a driving force behind flexibilization in both low-cost and high-cost countries. These arguments are opposed in the chapter on the grounds that there is a need for basic collaborative structures in order to maintain social security and economic growth in the Western world where the complexity of specialized education and skills must be taken into consideration. Claussen outlines the competitive advantages of collaborative structures, using the competitiveness of the Nordic Model as an example. Here, the neoliberalist arguments are modified in several ways; the Nordic Model seems to support a highly competitive business environment. This argument also seems to be confirmed in analyses of EU assessments on economic development. Thus, Claussen maintains that neo-liberal deregulation, individualization, empowerment and the downgrading of collaborative structures are not justifiable as necessary moves in order to meet global competition. These strategies are therefore not the essence of flexibilitation. This argument is also in line with theories on human rationality, and it exposes the faulty presuppositions on which neo-liberalist arguments are based, he claims. Consequently, flexibility is not necessarily a matter of deregulation and downgrading as much as ‘changing some of the existing regulations and structures in order to facilitate the evolvement of new collaborative arrangements and arenas’. In the final chapter, Egil J. Skorstad synthesises some of the arguments and empirical findings in the preceding chapters in relation to the analytical approaches presented in Chapter 2. This is, of course, not an easy task given the differences in theoretical and methodological approaches and the contextual complexity of the phenomenon studied. However, taken together the chapters illustrate some of the main points of the discussion in Chapter 2. There are several roads that can lead to improved organizational flexibility; ingenious employment arrangements comprise only one such route. The findings as well as the discussion also illustrate that there are very complex mechanisms involved, occasionally leading to unexpected outcomes. Organizational flexibility may appear to be a straightforward and easily attainable goal at first glance, but prove to be very difficult to achieve in reality. Relying exclusively on employment strategies to improve the rearrangement capacity of an organization may thus be a futile strategy indeed. The model presented in Chapter 2 may therefore be instructive in the sense that it may give a better understanding of what organizational flexibility is all about. ***** The contributions, as they are presented above, indicate that ‘flexibility’ as a scientific concept is highly fascinating, attracting a wide array of political actors and researchers as well. The popularity of the concept does not, however, seem

14

Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

to reflect its lack of clarity, and accordingly there is a danger that the concept will be less useful for analytical purposes – ‘if flexibility is everything, maybe it’s nothing’ – like so many other concepts that are popularly embraced in politics and science. As several of the contributors argue, the ambiguity of flexibility not only applies to the different normative views about whether flexibility is good or bad, but it also broaches the question of the validity of scientific approaches as well. These approaches reflect some of the general challenges to social science and organization theory: the scope and levels of analysis, instrumentalist and institutionalist approaches, and disagreements over flexibility’s significance and extent and its consequences for employees, employers and the economy at large. By pointing to empirical findings, the question of the validity of an analytical approach is broached: Firstly, to what extent is it possible to measure the developments of flexible workplace organizations statistically, through surveys? Here, the operationalization of ‘flexibility’, and the status given to the Atkinson model need discussion. Secondly, it seems as if case studies tend to emphasize the dynamics of organizational change, and the quest for flexibility at managerial and workplace levels, while national surveys seem to conclude that the development of a ‘flexible working life’ at the societal level is modest. It seems that there is a need to bridge these approaches, in order to substantiate which developments are actually taking place in working life, and which developments are merely rhetorical or symbolic. The ‘flexible firm’ discourse that followed in the wake of Atkinson’s 1984 article illustrates the need for a more comprehensive approach to flexibility in organizations. In this book we have based the discussion upon a model in which different aspects of flexibility are seen as interconnected, and where the lack of flexibility in one dimension might be compensated for, or even become a prerequisite for, flexibility in another. This makes it possible to go further than a discussion where flexibility is limited to pertain only to ‘non-standard’ manning strategies. Furthermore, it also helps to avoid the pitfalls of considering specific organizational forms – the bureaucratic archetype in particular – as ‘non-flexible’, while others – like adhocracy and team-work organizations – are regarded as ‘flexible’ organizational forms per se. The model introduced in Chapter 2 reflects a pragmatic view on the relationship between flexibility and organizational forms. The implications for working life should be subjected to empirical studies, and will be further elaborated in the continuing project that gave rise to these papers. References Atkinson, J. (1984), ‘Manpower strategies for flexible organizations’, Personnel Management, August. Bauman, Z. (2001), Community. Seeking Safety in an Insecure World (Cambridge: Polity Press/Oxford: Blackwell Publishers).

Introduction

15

Best, M. (1990), The New Competition. Institutions of Industrial Restructuring (Cambridge: Polity Press). Braverman, H. (1974), Labor and Monopoly Capital. The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York/London: Monthly Review Press). Brusco, S. (1990), ‘The idea of the Industrial District: Its genesis’, in F. Pyke, G. Becattini and W. Sengenberger (eds) Industrial Districts and Inter-firm Co-operation in Italy (Genève: ILO publications). Burchell, B., Lapido, D. and Wilkinson, F. (eds) (2002), Job Insecurity and Work Intensification. (London/New York: Routledge). Gallie, D., White, M., Cheng, Y. and Tomlinson, M. (1998), Restructuring the Employment Relationship (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Hammer, M. and Champy, J. (1995), Reengineering the Corporation. A Manifesto for Business Revolution (London: Nicholas Brealy). Karlsson, J. Ch. and Eriksson, B. (2001), Fleksibla arbetsplatser och arbetsvillkor. En empirisk prövning av en retorisk figur (Lund: Arkiv). Maurice, M., Sellier, F. and Silvestre, J.J. (1982), Politique d’education et organisation industrielle en France et en Allemagne. Essai ������������������������� d’analyse sociétale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Pollert, A. (1988), ‘Dismantling Flexibility’, Capital and Class 34, 42–75. Quinlan, M., Mayhew, C. and Bohle, P. (2001), ‘The Global Expansion of Precarious Employment, Work Disorganization and Consequences for Occupational Health: A Review of Recent Research’, International Journal of Health Services 31:2. Rose, M. (2008), ‘Functional flexibility in Britain. Full-strength, lite, slight, or token?’, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, Working Paper: . Schonberger, R. (1986), World Class Manufacturing. The Lessons of Simplicity Applied (New York: The Free Press). Sennett, R. (1999), Det fl������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������� eksible menneske. Eller arbejdets forvandling og personlighedens nedsmeltning (��������������������� Højbjerg: Hovedland). Voss, C. and Clutterbuck, D. (1989), Just-in-Time. A Global Status Report (Berlin: IFS Publications/Springer-Verlag). Womack, J.P., Jones, D.T. and Roos, D. (1990), The Machine that Changed the World (New York: Rawson Ass.).

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Chapter 2

The Ambiguity of Flexibility Egil J. Skorstad

Introduction During the last decades a great number of reports from research, newspapers and the media in general have left the public with the impression that working life is changing in profound ways. Indeed, the cases of change reported are so numerous that it has become common to speak of ‘the new working life’. The stories related are quite often success stories; new solutions have gotten rid of old problems and created new opportunities; rigid and self-centred organizations have turned into flexible, customer oriented systems; great losses have been turned into profit. Less often, changes are reported in a critical way, describing problems related to downsizing and changes in working conditions in general; more demanding work, increased intensification, diminishing predictability and a growing number of burnout cases among employees. In spite of this, change is most often considered both inevitable and imperative. Traditional solutions are no longer considered adequate, rather quite the opposite, they are most often considered unsuitable in coping with new conditions. In the particular case of Norway the importance of this interpretation even reached the level of the Conservative government in 2004, having as one of its most visible consequences the establishment of a new Ministry of Modernization. A great many commentators also seem to know why change proliferates. It is the process of globalization, it is claimed, which compels companies to abandon old regimes and take on new ones. Increased globalization has raised competition to a new, inexorable level; product markets have reached their point of saturation, customer demand is no longer fixed and predictable; it has become both transient and unpredictable. In such environments, the argument goes, companies can no longer cling to what they have always done, continuing to produce and offer the products they once were constructed to manufacture. To survive, they have to change in profound ways in order to deliver what the customers really want, not what they are supposed to want. This is one of the main reasons why efficient organizations to an increasing degree are being associated with flexibility. According to the above logic, modern producers have no choice other than to be flexible. When the needs of the customers

 Not surprisingly, this gave some scholars the opportunity to poke fun at the government’s ignorance regarding the meaning of the concept modern.

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Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

and the environment in general are changing at an ever faster rate, the success or failure of companies depends on their ability to change as well. Those who learn the art of reorganizing themselves, quickly and efficiently, will be successful; those who are unable to carry out such manoeuvres are in deep trouble. While the latter may be efficient in doing what they have always done, the former are efficient in operating in new and unprecedented ways. In short, flexible firms are purported to be successful not only in terms of being effective, they are also successful in an efficient way, delivering exactly what is demanded. Flexibility, then, is increasingly being considered to be a key to success. Furthermore, it is not merely seen as an economic advantage that exclusively benefits the company. A great number of observers also consider it to be a contribution to the improvement of the quality of working life, especially among the rank and file. Flexible organizations, it is argued, are dependent upon skilled employees, and highly developed skills are usually considered an asset. Furthermore, flexibility is associated with redeployment, and redeployment means of course varied work. Finally, flexibility relies on the discretion of the employees actually doing the work, thus opening for some autonomy. In sum we are quite often offered the picture of the empowered worker whose importance, power and independence have been restored because of the need for a multifunctional, highly skilled local decision-maker who can change his course of action in a quick and efficient way. And the irony of it all, it has been noted, is that this is not a transformation that has emerged as a consequence of numerous attempts made by ideologically wellfounded or well-intentioned researchers or managers to improve the conditions of working life. The resurrection of the skilled and autonomous worker is seen as a transformation enforced upon management by the idiosyncrasies of the market. Fortunately, then, the blessings of the market are not confined to the realm of economics, but work in favour of labour as well. There are, however, some problems connected to these contentions, and several of them are related to the concept of flexibility. At first sight the concept itself gives the impression of something positive, quite in line with the statements referred to above. On a closer inspection, however, the picture becomes more complex, disclosing the ambiguity of the notion, and demonstrating not only its positive qualities but its negative qualities as well. Is, for instance, flexibility simply a matter of having the possibility to operate according to one’s free will, or is it a product of asymmetrical power relations and inexorable constraint? And why are some organizations obviously more flexible than others? Is it because they have developed some salient qualities during a long period of time, or is it because they have sufficient resources to buy themselves out of the problems? Moreover, what consequences does flexibility really have on working conditions? Does it make work more challenging, exciting and safe, or does it make it more fragmented, less challenging, more mind-numbing and more unsafe? Does it lead to the possibility  This is, for instance, an argument put forward by Charles Sabel in Work and Politics (1982).

The Ambiguity of Flexibility

19

of more autonomy or does it mean less freedom and more constraint? Does it lead to genuine commitment or does it feed the instrumental and calculating behaviour of the employees? The answer to these latter questions is of course in some ways dependent on the answer to the first ones; whether flexibility is a matter of having the possibility of deploying one’s free will, or rather that it is the effect of powerless employees being subjected to the authority of management? I will start here, by discussing in general what flexibility might involve. The ambiguity of flexibility Discussions concerning the relation between flexibility and efficiency in general and flexibility and working life in particular are not new. We may retrace the subject, for instance, in the traditional criticism of the ideal typical bureaucratic organization where one of the main deficiencies is claimed to be its inability to learn and to change; bureaucracy and rigidity are usually considered to be two sides of the same matter. Certainly, a bureaucratic organization may be considered to be efficient, but only as long as its environment behaves in a stable and predictable way. As soon as it becomes unstable, the bureaucratic organization runs into trouble. This contingency is also one of the main points in the classic study by Tom Burns and Gary Stalker (1961) where they claim that organic organizations usually are better off in turbulent settings. They are the most efficient, Burns and Stalker argue, precisely because they are able to operate in flexible ways. The solutions of organic organizations, then, appear as the antithesis to bureaucracy, primarily because they are characterized by the ability to re-deploy their employees, their information structure and their lines of authority on short notice, depending on the actual demand or work at hand. As part of the contingency tradition they demonstrate the rather widely held contention that the optimal way of organizing work depends on the surroundings of the organization. Consequently, organic solutions are not always superior; mechanistic solutions are considered to be preferable when the operations take place in familiar and predictable settings. In recent years, however, the question of flexibility has gained additional importance, especially because of changing business cycles in general and increasing competition from low-cost countries in particular. Recent recession tendencies have demonstrated the fragility of western producers; one of their strategies of survival has in some cases been to discard traditional regimes of fixed and life-long employment in favour of looser, more short-term arrangements, thus giving room for closer adjustments of costs to incomes. Moreover, increased internationalization has been conducive to the saturation of the market, rendering it difficult to compete in terms of business as usual. Organizational survival in such settings, it is argued, is becoming increasingly dependent on a company’s ability to adjust production according to demand, or having the power to work the market so thoroughly that demand is adjusted to comply with production. Both strategies require the ability to respond quickly, both regarding space and time.

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As a consequence of the developments mentioned above, some observers also claim that they can predict the emergence of a new kind of business in our part of the world. When producers in high-cost countries are challenged by their counterparts in low-cost countries, the former easily run into trouble, mostly because of their comparative labour-cost disadvantage. Their solution, it is argued, should be to turn to something new, and quite often this is referred to as the ‘knowledge industry’, that is business with a workforce dominated by highly skilled employees. In turn, it is added, such qualifications might be conducive to considerable changes in employment relations in the case of the individual firm. The qualifications are of a general kind, their possessors may in principle be employed anywhere, consequently they appear to be more attractive, more independent, more powerful and less vulnerable than their unskilled colleagues in traditional industry. Management, it is argued, cannot discipline these employees in traditional ways by relying on close supervision and direct control. To gain commitment they have to resort to systems of reward instead of punishment or to develop a company culture where employees are sufficiently socialized to be led by the inner conviction and self-interest that are considered optimal from the organizational point of view. These examples illustrate the ambiguity of flexibility. In some cases it is confined to the question of adjusting demands and capacity in a quantitative sense. In other cases, qualitative aspects are imperative, as in the cases where there is a pressing need to produce something new, voluntarily or under severe constraint. In short, as indicated above, the concept of flexibility is used in a notoriously ambiguous way, involving aspects such as organizational flexibility, production flexibility, labour flexibility, technological flexibility, financial flexibility, wage flexibility, marketing flexibility, and so on. No wonder, then, that the corresponding debate is very confusing. What’s more, confusion often increases further still because flexibility is often debated from a dual position, either from an individual or an organizational point of view. The resulting confusion of this attempt to embrace or grasp totally different phenomena in one single notion may of course lead to the conclusion that the concept is too general to explain anything at all. On the other hand, much descriptive and explanatory power or diversity would be lost if we abandoned the concept altogether. One way of dealing with this dilemma could be to choose a pathway in between, as I shall do in the following discussion. Instead of applying the general concept I will deconstruct it and use it in a more differentiated and distinct form. By making these distinctions I am aiming at structuring the discussion in a manageable and hopefully meaningful way. The consequence of such an approach is that the traditional notion of flexibility may very well entail contradictions without damaging the notion itself. Furthermore, it means that different kinds of  The problem connected to the use of the general concept is illustrated in an article by Anna Pollert (1988) where she starts out criticizing its malleability, then goes on to reject most of the existing studies while employing the very same concept herself.

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flexibility may be interrelated, either in a fortifying or an impairing way. Finally, different kinds of flexibility may be considered as belonging to different levels of analysis, meaning that a single or several kinds of flexibility may be part of the constituting mechanisms leading to other kinds of flexibility. I will give some examples of this later. My discussion in this chapter, then, is based on the following: The main issue to be handled is the question of organizational flexibility, or to put it briefly: What does it mean and in what way might it be influenced? My preliminary answer to these two questions is as follows: By organizational flexibility I understand an organizational ability to respond to variations and unexpected occurrences in a pliable and adaptable way. This ability may be thought of as varying from well developed at one end of the spectrum to nearly non-existent at the other. The nature of this flexibility may be influenced in several ways, among which I will concentrate upon those which appear most important and relevant: (1) employment practices, (2) organizational structure, (3) organizational culture, and (4) interorganizational relations. All these issues are considered to have some impact on organizational flexibility in one way or another. Each is in turn conditioned by other features of work in a particular way. For instance, the possibilities managers have of choosing among alternative practices of employment (1) will depend on the level of unemployment, employment regulation and the strength of the unions in relation to managerial prerogatives. The distinctiveness of a company culture (3) is affected by its history regarding employment relations, the experience of the workforce and the nature of work. The structure of an organization (2) may be altered by changing job demarcations, remuneration systems, ways of communication, relations of authority, and so on. Inter-organizational relations (4) are dependent on the content of relations as well as their form. In sum, all these relations form a hierarchy of means and ends constituting some elements of the mechanisms leading to the phenomenon to be studied. Additionally, there are interrelations between the seemingly independent conditions referred to above. Employment practices may, for instance, affect the culture of an organization as well as its structure. The culture, in turn, is not only affected by alternative modes of employment, but also by structural qualities as well as networking practices with other firms. Moreover, different structures may give room for alternative strategies both concerning inter-organizational and manning practices. Finally, business strategies focusing on obtaining flexibility through networking may of course have an impact on the structural qualities of each participating firm. In sum this adds up to a complex web of interrelations which disturbs the often over-simplified picture offered of the relation between the flexibility of the organization and each of its constituent elements. I will return to some further examples of this complexity at the end of this chapter. First I will concentrate on each of the main elements and their potential importance for organizational flexibility.  Based on both academic and management literature.

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Flexibility and employment practices Using employment strategies to achieve increased flexibility is a policy that was primarily supported by John Atkinson in his work from the mid-1980s and this may be an appropriate opportunity to recollect his main arguments and proposals for a new practise. Atkinson takes on a prescriptive role in that he advises business and industry on how to cope with future challenges. This advice is a logical consequence of his interpretation of contemporary society, and he pinpoints the following features as especially critical for the future of business in general. Firstly, Atkinson says, we live in a time (the 1980s) characterized by economic recession, compelling companies to lay-off and reduce their number of employees in order to cut costs. Secondly, he continues, the economic future of business is gloomy. There is no immediate improvement in sight, something that makes most companies reluctant to extend their workforce by employing new people in permanent full-time employment positions. Thirdly, technological change is taking place faster than ever before; what may be considered modern and efficient today may very well be regarded as both inefficient and obsolete tomorrow. Under such circumstances, Atkinson says, companies might also find themselves facing an additional problem since they may have a workforce that has qualifications which are only relevant for yesterday’s solutions. Finally, the length of the normal workday has been shortened in our part of the world, mainly because of economic growth and the efforts of trade unions. Permanent employees may of course find this development satisfying, but to the companies it just means another cost related problem, and a serious one as well, especially in times where various forms of production are gradually being transformed into technology intensive systems. Expensive equipment and machinery are not being used to their full potential, and this worsens the general picture when it comes to the total costs of production. In this way Atkinson constructs a reality that above all is characterized by uncertainty and unpredictability. The only thing that is certain is that costs will remain critical and that technology will change. Otherwise, the future appears to be unreliable, and this leads to the seemingly obvious and unavoidable conclusion: When future circumstances are unpredictable, firms have to avoid anything that may curtail their course of action. Their autonomy should be as great as possible, leaving them with the possibility to manipulate input variables freely in order to reach the optimal combination from an economic point of view. This is an accurate reflection of Atkinson’s argument. His advice is to cope with uncertainty by changing the rules of employment. Accordingly, traditional forms of life-long permanent employment ought to be replaced by a system that allows companies to adjust their manpower in an efficient way to the actual number needed. Consequently, some part of the workforce ought to be interchangeable in the sense that they may be easily hired and fired according to the companies’ needs. This gives companies what Atkinson refers to as numerical flexibility, that  This applies to work such as Atkinson (1984) and Atkinson (1986).

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is, an ability to match the relationship between customer demand, manufacturing capacity and manpower needed efficiently from a purely quantitative perspective. This quantitative adaptability, however, is not enough. (Post)modern companies also have to be able to adapt quickly in the functional sense of the concept, especially when demands change in a qualitative way. This is, for instance, the case when customers demand something new, either because of changing fashions or because technological innovations make it possible to raise product qualities to higher and more attractive levels. To handle such changes, companies must have the ability to reorganize themselves on short notice, and such reorganization, in turn, presupposes a workforce that is multifunctional, that is, which has sufficient skills to perform the variety of tasks in question. Quite often, these skills comprise a component specific to the company, consequently they can not be readily boughtin. Firms in general, then, have a need to establish and keep a core of employees of their own who have the necessary skills, sufficient experience and the appropriate behaviour to be able and willing to be redeployed easily according to management demands. The ultimate consequence, Atkinson argues, is that the flexible firm should abandon the principle of organizing work according to an orthodox hierarchical structure. Instead, the new structure ought to … involve the break-up of the labour force into increasingly peripheral, and therefore numerically flexible groups of workers, clustered about a numerically stable core group which will conduct the organization’s key, firm-specific activities. At the core, the emphasis is on functional flexibility; shifting to the periphery, numerical flexibility becomes more important. As the market grows, the periphery expands to take up slack; as growth slows, the periphery contracts. At the core, only tasks and responsibility change; the workers here are insulated from medium term fluctuations of the market, whereas those in the periphery are more exposed to them (Atkinson 1984, 29).

In this way the core is made up of workers who have high, firm-specific skills, and undertake varied and challenging tasks while enjoying a high level of job security. The periphery includes several groups. The first one is made up of full-time employees who carry out mind-numbing jobs, involving few learning possibilities, little autonomy and few opportunities to advance in a company career. The second peripheral group also belongs to the company’s regular employees, although not on a full-time or regular basis. They are typically part-timers, workers on some sort of contract, and so on. Finally, there is the possibility of hiring workers from job recruitment agencies, hire agencies or using self-employed workers and subcontractors. This is labour that can be hired to do both specialized as well as mundane jobs, thus it may contribute to company flexibility in a functional as well as a numerical way. In sum, then, this manning strategy may increase the company’s capacity to change. However, to be really successful at this, Atkinson says, companies also need to be flexible financially; that is having the ability to adjust wage levels according to the profitability of the company and the behaviour of the employees.

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For instance, he claims that there should be substantial wage differences between skilled and unskilled workers. Low pay for the latter would strengthen the negative effect of dead-end jobs, thus contributing to the desired level of turnover of personnel. In a similar way, pay levels should be attached to individual performance. Those who perform well should be well rewarded while those who contribute below expectations should be sanctioned through lower wages. In this way, the argument goes, both functional and numerical flexibility are sustained. If high skills, commitment, cooperation and creativity are well rewarded, it will serve to encourage those having these qualities while discouraging those who demonstrate the opposite. Eventually, and as a consequence of this differentiation, the number of desirable employees will increase while that of the undesirable will decrease as they will seek employment elsewhere because of what they may consider as unfair or preposterous treatment. In using such arguments, John Atkinson acts as a spokesman for a wage system based on individual performance rather than qualifications, seniority and position. In his opinion, it should pay off to act in accordance with what the management wants; being willing to adapt, making an extra effort, taking on a heavier workload or working at less popular times such as evenings, nights, weekends or holidays. And while managers usually are seen to be in a superior position that makes them the best judges of local needs, final pay should be determined locally, by management at the level of the individual firm. Consequently, the collective negotiation of wages accomplished at industry or branch level does not fit neatly into this system as it is considered a roadblock to optimal flexibility. In this way, then, if Atkinson’s recommendations were to be realized, the workforce of the flexible firm would prove itself to be a fragmented phenomenon, particularly regarding working conditions, employment relations and wages. Roughly speaking, employees would be polarized; some of them would be included in the privileged group, enjoying the benefits of permanent and fulltime employment, running few risks regarding the danger of being unemployed, receiving high wages and carrying out challenging and varied work. Others would end up in the more marginalized group where work is routine, wages low and the risk of being laid off relatively high. The rough picture drawn above is not, however, anything new. Nearly ten years before Atkinson made his recommendations scholars such as Andrew Friedman (1977) maintained that working life has always been characterized by polarization as long as capitalism has existed. At least this has been the case in Great Britain, Friedman says, where workers have been divided into a core and a periphery. The former has included workers who are wanted by management because of their high and attractive skills. The latter has included the unskilled workers, those who are disposable and interchangeable because of the simplicity of the tasks they perform. At the firm level, Friedman says, a corresponding duality may be found comparable with the dualism Atkinson is recommending. The core group workers are essential for the company’s competitiveness, exactly because of their qualifications, which are both company-specific as well as tacit. In spite of this,

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Friedman argues, these workers do not escape from management endeavours to control them in order to fully enjoy their knowledge and effort. However, because of their importance they are not likely to be controlled in a Tayloristic way but rather enjoy some autonomy in work as well as other privileges that may foster their loyalty and commitment to the company. Friedman speaks of this way of managing as ‘responsible autonomy’, a strategy that bears some resemblance to Flanders’ argument some years earlier when he expressed his concern about the impairment of management control in the following way: ‘We have to regain control by sharing it’ (Flanders 1970). The other group, however, which Friedman (1976) refers to as the periphery group, might be treated in quite a different way. This group comprises unskilled or semiskilled workers carrying out highly fragmented and consequently routine work. Because of the simplicity of this work, there is no need for general or company-specific qualifications in advance; the necessary skills in question might easily be acquired at the site of work. These workers, then, are disposable or interchangeable, they are easily replaced if necessary and there is no risk at stake on the part of the company in firing them or letting them go. Consequently, they might be controlled in a direct, and if necessary harsh, arbitrary and unfair way. If they choose to leave because of such treatment, their exit seldom leads to problems of any kind since they can easily be replaced. Andrew Friedman’s work has most often been associated with discussions of the application of different managerial strategies used to control workers, depending on the importance of their contribution to the process of production. One of the reasons for this differentiated treatment is connected with the question of flexibility. Modern enterprises, Friedman says, are becoming increasingly inflexible, partly because of the separation of execution from conception, and partly from the increasing power of organized workers who may disrupt production if they judge their working conditions as unacceptable. To cope with this problem, modern management has chosen to employ different strategies for controlling different groups of workers, or as Friedman puts it, ‘Splitting workers into various groups and applying different types of managerial strategies towards those groups represents a major method whereby flexibility is gained and the capitalist mode of production itself maintained’ (1997, 108). These strategies, then, are as we have seen mainly of the following two kinds: Responsible Autonomy is used to obtain loyalty and commitment from those who are considered by management to be of importance to performance, either because of their skills, their contribution to the exercise of managerial authority or their potential to mobilize concerted collective resistance towards unpopular management decisions. Direct Control, on the other hand, is employed towards peripheral workers; that is non- or semi-skilled workers lacking sufficient social ties to create a climate of solidarity embracing all their fellow workers at the bottom of the hierarchy. Consequently, applying Atkinson’s notions, numerical flexibility may be obtained through peripheral groups, while functional flexibility may be obtained   Quoted in Thompson (1989).

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through core groups. Andrew Friedman does not use the notions of flexibility referred to above, but he is certainly discussing the relation between different kinds of flexibility and different kinds of employees in the same way as Atkinson does. Flexibility and organizational solutions Flexibility is not, however, as initially indicated, confined to the question of practices of employment. It is also dependent upon the organization of work in a more general and encompassing way. One of the very reasons why flexibility became such an important issue at the end of the twentieth century was indeed the contention that the dominant ways of organizing work had proved themselves to be obsolete. Modern organizations were generally equated with Taylorism, and Taylorism, the argument went, had become too rigid, too slow, too inflexible to cope with an increasingly turbulent world. That is the main message conveyed by consultants and commentators in general. Even scholars such as John Atkinson (1984), Andrew Friedman (1977), Richard Edwards (1976), Michael Piore and Charles Sabel (1984) and Womack and colleagues (1990) subscribe to the contention. Their explanations of the rigidity are, however, somewhat different. For instance, Richard Edwards sees rigidity as a consequence of the growing size of most enterprises. Andrew Friedman explains it as a combined effect of the division of conception from execution and an increasing resistance towards change. Michael Piore and Charles Sabel simply state that producers of the Western World have to become more flexible to survive. If not, they will be out-competed by emerging competitors operating in regions where they benefit from comparative advantages such as low costs and few and trifling regulations. Finally, Womack and his colleagues claim that the rigidity of contemporary organizations stems from product-specific technology and deskilled workers. The obvious solution for them, then, is the construction of a new organization manned with skilled workers using multifunctional technology (preferably organized in a lean way). Size, technology, skill and flexibility Along with Richard Edwards (1976) I would certainly agree with the contention that organizational size does matter. At first sight it seems almost obvious; the possibility small firms have of operating in flexible ways is far greater than for large firms. Small firms typically enjoy multi-skilled employees, multilateral forms of communication, blurred distinctions between supervisors and subordinates and a high degree of transparency in general. Large firms, on the other hand, often suffer from unilateral communication, unskilled workers, a rigid division of work, sharp distinctions between workers and managers, frequent confrontations between conflicting interests and complexity and opacity in general. Consequently, small firms may rearrange and change direction on short notice. Large firms, on the other hand, are more like trains; the direction of movement is predetermined by the tracks and changing speed requires great effort.

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The small craft manufacturer may be an illustrative case. Craft workers are typically skilled workers; they may easily be redeployed on short notice according to changing needs and new demands. Thus they are polyvalent and flexible in the functional sense of the word. At the same time craft producers are most often equipped with general, multi-purpose technology, whether of the old-fashioned kind like hammers, saws, turning lathes or milling machines, or new kinds like computer-based information technology. These two features then, multi-skilled employees and multi-purpose technology, are the basic elements that lead to the flexibility of small firms, not their size. Modest size may of course facilitate any reorganization, but such reorganization would have been impossible without the flexibility of the people and technology involved. As indicated above, large organizations quite often demonstrate the opposite. They are slow in their movements and hard to change. Their large size in itself most often means that they have a (long) history of growth, and that very growth might explain some of their rigidity. William Abernathy’s excellent study of the history of the car industry in the US illustrates the point (Abernathy 1978). He demonstrates in a very convincing way the proliferation and the changing nature of innovations in this industry in its early developmental phase. At the beginning, product innovations dominated the picture completely, and this domination lasted until the beginning of the twentieth century. From then on this type of innovation started to decline and was successively superseded by increasing cases of process innovation. Eventually, the cases of both kinds of innovation began to fade away; the possibilities for further improvements seemed to have been exhausted. Abernathy explains this trajectory by referring to the incessant search for increased productivity. In the beginning, he says, car producers competed on the basis of the product itself; that is its design, technological solutions, finish and cosmetics. Those who were most successful in satisfying the needs and desires of the customer survived; those who were not went out of business. This kind of competition dominated and lasted until producers and customers alike had reached a point where they seemed to have arrived at a mutual agreement on what a car was actually about. Product development had during these processes led to a construction that Abernathy refers to as a ‘dominant design’, and from now on competition slowly turned into improvements focusing on productivity; hence the shift from product to process innovations. These latter innovations, in their turn, eventually led to a technology-intensive, highly interdependent production system where all parts were closely linked, both to each other and to the final product and its numerous components. The development of single-purpose or productspecific technology, for instance, was a part of this system, inhibiting or delaying, of course, the introduction of new solutions. Consequently, there was a dramatic drop in product innovations. Even process innovations faded away as a result of this development; isolated changes in the production system became increasingly   Process innovations included such examples as minute division of work, the introduction of interchangeable parts, the assembly line, and so on (Hounshell 1984).

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difficult as the system itself turned out to be increasingly integrated. Needless to say, rigidity was built into the system, not only regarding innovations but also regarding daily operations, leaving little room for diversified production. Organizational structure and flexibility As suggested above, rigidity stemming from technology ought not to be considered as a consequence of technology itself. Such an erroneous inference would be to subscribe to technological determinism (Nylehn and Skorstad 1982; Skorstad 1988). Technology, of course, should be considered as a social construction; consequently, the rigidity referred to in the case above should not be interpreted as a consequence of technology but rather as a result of an incessant search for increased productivity, primarily aiming at realising economies of scale. In that sense, technology and its impact ought to be seen in an economic, social and political context where dominant values, interests and priorities shape the outcome. Local procedures, rules and regulations implemented to govern organizational behaviour ought to be interpreted in a corresponding way. As with technology, they should be understood as materialized outcomes of social, economic and political processes occurring both inside and outside the firm. And like technology, such structures may open for quite opposite consequences as regards flexibility. For instance, if employers execute obsessive control it might lead to an organizational inability to respond adequately to changing conditions. Bureaucratic control, Richard Edwards says, is ‘… embedded in the social and organizational structure of the firm and is built into job categories, work rules, promotion procedures, discipline, wage scales, definitions of responsibilities, and the like. Bureaucratic control establishes the impersonal force of “company rules” or “company policy” as the basis for control’ (Edwards 1976, 131). Such structures or means of control might also trigger off unanticipated reactions on the part of the employees. They might, for instance, find it useful to stick to the formal procedures as a means of protest or protection. ‘Working to rule’ is a wellknown example of employee resistance, and it may very well paralyse planned operations, thus demonstrating the shortcomings of formal structures, regardless of their ingenuity. The outcome, then, is not only rigidity or inertia stemming from the formal structure in itself. Conflict of interests related to working conditions may further rigidity even more if workers find it expedient to resist. In such settings, even unions may contribute to the rigidity by concentrating their policy  Howard H. Rosenbrock gives a corresponding account of technological development when stating that technological choices reduce subsequent choices considerably, leading the process into a trajectory which becomes increasingly difficult to leave (the Lushai Hills effect) (Rosenbrock 1990). In general, manufacturing industries quite often follow a technological trajectory where they eventually develop into highly integrated technologyintensive systems leaving little room for changes in parts of the system because of their consequences for the rest.

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on the interpretation of implemented rules and procedures instead of questioning the rules and procedures themselves. In the US, James Womack et al. (1990) refer to this as a system of ‘job-control unionism’ when illustrating the problem of worker deployment stifled by the limitations of an enormously high number of categories of different jobs. In the mid-1970s, for instance, Richard Edwards (1976) reported that Polaroid operated with a system of eighteen different job families, three hundred job titles and fourteen different pay grades. Additionally, seven distinct pay steps for each job were possible, resulting in 2,100 individual slots for Polaroid’s 6,397 hourly workers at that time. No great imagination is needed to understand the embedded rigidity in such a system. External constraints may, of course, have a similar effect. Laws and regulations governing daily working life in general place restrictions on the strategic choices available to the individual firm regarding work time, wage level, pay systems, layoffs, the use of part-time and temporary workers, substitutes from temporary job-recruitment agencies, and so on. Even dominant traditions and practices occasionally referred to as socio-cultural characteristics may have a corresponding effect, which is demonstrated both in new institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell 1983) and in the societal effect theory of Marc Maurice, François Sellier and Jean-Jacques Silvestre (1982). In this way, rules and regulations may appear to be roadblocks to flexibility. They may lead organizational behaviour in a certain direction and be conducive in keeping it there. On the other hand, as in the case of technology, we are not facing any kind of institutional determinism. If certain combinations of traditions, rules and regulations may lead to rigidity, other combinations may very well lead to the opposite. Or to put it in another way: if the incapacity to handle incertitude may be learned, why can’t the capacity to handle it also be learned? The classic work of Tom Burns and Gary M. Stalker (1961) quoted above illustrates the point. Organizations may be constructed in a detailed and rigid way, giving little room for discretion. They may also, however, be constructed in a loose or tentative way, giving ample room for quick responses to changing circumstances. Burns and Stalker claim that ‘organic’ organizations have this quality, characterized as they are by … the contributive nature of special knowledge and experience to the common task of the concern; … the adjustment and continual re-definition of individual tasks through interacting with others; … the spread of commitment to the concern beyond technical definition; … knowledge about the technical or commercial nature of the here and now task may be located anywhere in the network; … this location becoming the ad hoc centre of control authority and communication; … the lateral rather than a vertical direction of communication through the organization, communication between people of different rank, also, resembling consultation rather than command (1961, 21).

Admittedly, in some cases it might indeed seem as if we are facing a kind of determinism, for instance in the case of economy of scale. Conventional economic theory, for instance, maintains that minimum-cost batch sizes may be calculated

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on the basis of the costs related to production, components kept in stock and the setting-up of machines and equipment in order to switch to the required batches in question (Eilon 1962). For several decades this was a truism in manufacturing circles. No one objected to the calculations until Shigeo Shingo of Toyota entered the scene, challenging what had traditionally been regarded as an objective law of economics (Shingo 1984). The traditional contention, Shingo says, is false, simply because of the misunderstanding of set-up times as a fixed entity. Set-up times are not fixed entities, Shingo adds, they may be altered through innovative solutions and minimized to the point where they become irrelevant to the calculation of minimum-cost batch sizes. When that point is reached, one-size batches may turn out to be the best alternative, not only from a flexible point of view, but also from a production-economic point of view, mainly because of the reduction of work in progress. In fact, this very important comprehension is one of the main foundations of lean production. Lean production, Toyotism, Ohnism, just-in-time or world class manufacturing, is not primarily a question of implementing teams, as claimed by James Womack and his colleagues. The most important feature of lean production is rather a new system of production planning and control, a system where products are made in accordance with real demands.10 And the realization of such a real-time pull system is of course impossible without having a flexible system of manufacturing. In the case of a lean regime, this flexibility is obtained through minimized set-up times allowing for quick adjustments to changing demands. Teams, of course, support the flexibility, but the main contribution from teams in this case is to help balance the line, thus minimising the accumulation of buffers containing work in progress.11 In this way lean solutions emerge as a flexible system perfectly capable of handling changing demands. As such, it is claimed, the system combines two qualities traditionally thought of as incontestable opposites: mass production and flexibility. Consequently, it is often considered to be the very solution to one of the major crises of Taylorism: that is its rigidity stemming from single purpose technology and deskilled workers. The contention, however, ought to be considered with some reservation. Firstly, Taylorism should not be equated with complete rigidity. On the contrary, it is in fact a flexible system, precisely because of its technology and workers. Both are, as we have seen, interchangeable, and interchangeability might of course be understood as a kind of flexibility. Taylorism, then, is perfectly capable of coping with changing demands as long as it is confined to changes in volume.12 The  Expressions used respectively by Womack et al. (1990), Doshe et al. (1985), Coriat (1991), Voss/Clutterbuck (1989) and Sconberger (1986). 10 In contrast to expected demands, which were the traditional premises for planning and controlling the flow of production (Solberg 1989; Vollman 1991). 11  For a more thorough discussion, see for instance Voss and Clutterbuck (1989), Ohno (1990), Monden (1983) and Skorstad (1994/2006). 12 And as long as it may operate within generous regulations.

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problem, or crisis, arises when demand turns in a new direction, such as when customers ask for something new. In such cases, Taylorism is indeed in trouble because of the lacking multi-functionality of both men and machines. Taylorism, then, may operate in a flexible way, but only in the numerical and not in the functional sense of the word. Secondly, the flexibility of lean producers should not be equated with that of craft producers. Indeed Toyotism, in contrast to Taylorism, is flexible in a functional way, but only to a very limited degree. Its flexibility is mainly confined to the ability to produce variants that are basically cosmetic in their nature. The core of the variants is usually identical; it is the wrapping or appearance that might vary. The typical example of the production process at a lean manufacturer may be compared to the shape of a fork or a palm tree. In the beginning most of the production is devoted to manufacturing the main part of the components necessary for assembling the core of the final product. Variants are then produced at the end of the line, consisting mainly of minor differences in outer appearance. The flexibility of Toyotism, then, is mainly a consequence of interchangeable parts, production planning according to the pull logic and flexible technology minimising the set-up time necessary for changing tools. Flexibility and organizational culture The solutions referred to above would not, of course, function according to their embedded intentions if employees diverge from or resist what management sees as proper behaviour. The efficiency, as well as the flexibility of an organization, depends on a labour force which complies with the logic of the system. If they choose to oppose or resist, they are usually successful in doing so despite the ingenuity of the system. The degree of flexibility is, then, apart from being affected by the structure of the system itself, also dependent on the attitudes of the workers and the dominant culture of the firm; whether it is characterized by opposition or consent. Research is rich on examples illustrating worker resistance to increasing demands for labour effort, to unfair and arbitrary treatment or unacceptable conditions of work in general.13 Resistance is particularly effective when it displays itself in a collective way, based on mutual social bonds and a common interpretation of working conditions as its basic foundations. One of the main challenges for management, then, is to avoid the appearance of such resistance and preferably turn it into compliance and cooperation. Nothing would be better, of course, than to have a docile workforce acting in a compliant way, being committed and ‘self-directed’ in accordance with the internal and official logic of the firm. In his discussion of control, which we have elaborated upon above, 13 See for instance Ackroyd and Thompson (1999), Bideaux (1983), Edwards et al. (1995), Hodson (1995), Huzell (2005), Linhart (1981; 1982), Skorstad (2002), Whyte and Dalton (1977).

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Richard Edwards uses the concept of bureaucratic control in a way that might illustrate the point. Control is of course related to flexibility since those in total control may elicit compliance and cooperation from those who are controlled. According to Edwards, bureaucratic control may very well serve such objectives. Management, he says, need three principle types of behaviour.14 The first one is what he refers to as ‘rule orientation’, that is ‘… the awareness of the rules and the sustained propensity to follow them’ (Edwards 1979, 49). The second one is the behaviour trait referred to as ‘habits of predictability and dependability’. The behaviour in question here is not confined to that of eliciting rules but to be able to ‘… handle changes, new situations and emergencies with competence’, in other words: to be able to demonstrate flexibility if necessary. The third type of behaviour is the most sophisticated one. This concerns what Edwards refers to as ‘the internalization of the enterprise’s goals and values’ (Edwards 1979, 150). Because of this internalization, these workers are ‘self-directed’ or ‘self-controlled’ in the way referred to above. In such instances, there is little need for supervisors to monitor subordinates. Subordinates simply comply with the logic of the system on their own; they may be trusted to do their best in contributing to the goals of the company. Research is also rich in examples of measures employed by employers to achieve such behaviour. In his study, Richard Edwards illustrates the multiplicity of such initiatives, ranging from recruitment procedures, wage systems and promotion procedures to well known experiments involving job enrichment, job enlargement, worker self-management, worker-employer co-management and so on. In a similar vein, Gideon Kunda (1992) illustrates what he refers to as ‘the engineering of a culture’ in an excellent study of a computer producer in the US. The engineering devices in this case include the examples mentioned above, as well as the use of ‘… a steady stream of literature, training, group activities, public meetings, rituals, and supervisory and peer reinforcement’ (Handel 2003, 350). Several other studies could have been mentioned,15 but the two already mentioned are sufficient to illustrate the main point about endeavours to create employees who are willing to behave properly, that is, according to established criteria and management expectations in every respect. This involves discursive strategies aimed at furthering a common (and dominant) view of the world; it is about cosmetic changes veiling the fundamental contradictions embedded in work; it is about instrumental rewards offered on an individual employee basis. Together they may serve the original intentions of the firm in producing a docile workforce, completely committed to the goals of the firm. In this sense, these strategies may contribute in turning resistance into consent because they weaken what might be seen as the very foundations of concerted collective action: the process of interpreting or understanding the world, the process of identification and the process of interaction. 14 See Katz and Kahn (1978) for a similar categorization. 15 Such as Martin (1992) and Rose (1999).

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This may explain, for instance, the cooperative behaviour of production workers in (supposedly) lean manufacturing companies in Japan, as reported by James Womack et al. (1990). In spite of Womack’s own assurances of its positive impacts, the nature of the lean regime itself would normally justify worker resistance, especially because of intensified work and lack of breathing space (Nilssen and Skorstad 1986; Skorstad 1991, 1994/2006). However, among the Japanese manufacturers studied this is, surprisingly, not the case. Instead workers are busy furthering proposals that are meant to enhance improvements in productivity. In their study, Doshe, Jürgens and Malsh (1985) came to the same conclusions. Japanese workers in JIT-based manufacturing companies, they say, behave in a cooperative way, in spite of a regime characterized as even harsher and more ruthlessly remorseless than Taylorism. However, Doshe et al. ascribe the observed involvement to the very same system in concluding that ‘… Toyotism is, therefore, not an alternative to Taylorism, but rather a solution to its classic problem of the resistance of the workers to placing their knowledge of production in the service of rationalization’ (Doshe et al. 1985, 128). Japanese workers, they say, do not behave like this because of opportunism or cultural particularity; they simply do it because they are compelled to do it by a distinctive system characterized by transparency, constant understaffing, multi-machine tending and eliminated buffers. I believe they are wrong. That is, the increasing interdependency due to eliminated buffers, the pull logic represented by canbans and the frequent use of teams certainly may elicit increased adaptability from the workers. It is difficult to see, however, why this system, irrespective of its ingenuity, should turn subversive creativity into cooperative creativity. If there is no or little room for resistance, why don’t the workers just simply resort to resignation or passive adjustment? Why do they contribute actively to a process that might lead to further deterioration of working conditions and to the detriment of their fellow workers? To understand this, we have to move beyond the technological and organizational features of the manufacturing system itself. When doing so, other important peculiarities circumscribing the system appear. Three such peculiarities are of special importance here: the practicing of company level unions, the system of recruiting and the system of pay and promotion (Skorstad 1994/2006). The first peculiarity means that important questions related to conditions of work are decided upon at the level of each individual company. The second means that the career of each individual employee is largely confined to the possibilities within the company where he or she is first employed. The last two mean that wages as well as advancement are closely related to individual performance. Furthermore, performance is not primarily about quantifiable entities such as seniority or individual output. What counts most is attitude; whether you as an employee are docile, committed and creative or not. Those who are compliant and creative in a cooperative way are to be rewarded. Those who demonstrate the opposite, by behaving reluctantly or protesting, will be sanctioned in a negative way. Here we have, then, a reward system of a highly subjective nature that works in an

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environment freed from important restrictions; both internally and externally. No wonder, then, that Japanese workers behave as they do. The system cultivates and lures the self-interest of each individual employee, and it seems to have succeeded in doing that, just as American companies occasionally succeeded through their experiments with bureaucratic control: ‘The self-interest’ Richard Edwards says, ‘seems to have concurred compared to that of the collective’ (Edwards 1976, 145). At the turn of the century, we have for some time been witnessing processes of change that may have some of the effects referred to above. Collective bargaining is, for instance, increasingly being replaced by local agreements at the level of the individual firm. Management schemes bear increasing evidence of the faith in economic man as the optimal way of gaining success (Bradley et al. 2000). The distribution of power within the organization is increasingly being displaced in favour of management. It helps these processes that they take place in a context where unemployment is rising, unions are weakened and the role of the state has changed from a regulative to a de-regulative role. And it of course also helps that there seems to be a growing agreement about how to view the world. The changes referred to above are no longer mainly conceived of as means stemming from the strategies of insatiable managers in their incessant search for further productivity gains. To an ever-increasing extent, such means are considered necessary to satisfy a changing, powerful and demanding world. Globalization, it is maintained, and the increasing power and volatility of the customers, it is added, are changing the nature of the competition in a dynamic and unambiguous way. In order to survive in such an environment, the argument goes, flexibility is the only option. Out of deference to the contemporary nature of competition, organizations, in Richard Sennett’s words, have to move like a cat, fast and efficiently, in order to satisfy ever changing demands (Sennett 2002). This is not only the opinion of managers. A growing number of consultants, researchers, academics and commentators in general seem to share the view. Even labour unions seem to subscribe to the same interpretation. Alternative narratives have lost most of their momentum; the voices of their spokesmen have faded away. Those who still have a different opinion have been reduced in numbers; those who are exposed to the changes and want to resist them find themselves powerless and almost paralysed because they are confused and divided in their interpretation of the problem as well as its causes. As indicated above recent changes in our part of the world regarding the regulation of working time, use of temporary workers, part-time workers, hired workers on short-term contracts as well as changes in the level of bargaining, the introduction of individual pay-performance systems and the introduction of processand customer-oriented organizations may be considered part of the remedy for the dominant diagnosis put forward by the men in the driving seat. All these changes, it is argued, are of imperative importance if one is to succeed in meeting the everincreasing competition from abroad. And because the prescription is accepted and implemented (piecemeal), the changes may certainly lead to the promised

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and desired improvement in efficiency. But they will also most certainly lead to a division of the workforce, thus contributing to an individualization of the relations between management and their subordinates. This, in turn, means that the balance of power is shifted in favour of management since a divided workforce can be handled more easily than a unified and unanimous one. Collective resistance may fade away and give room for additional changes which may in turn have further individualising effects upon employment relations. In this way, such processes may be complementary and self-reinforcing, leading to what Sverre Lysgaard (1964) referred to as the ‘technical-economic ideal situation’,16 meaning that relations in the non-regulated realm of business are handled on an individual basis. If that state were to evolve, we would witness the advent of an organization which is flexible in the sense that the workforce willingly complies with the needs of management. Obtaining flexibility through cooperative creativity or creative involvement may, however, turn out to be quite another matter. This is a kind of flexibility that goes beyond the kind obtained through sheer obedience or compliance. It is about problem-solving and creative behaviour in general initiated by the employees themselves and based upon their experience as well as their discretion. Some of this behaviour may certainly, as we have seen above, be lured into existence by firm-specific means when employed in liberal settings. But if the full potential of this type of flexibility is to be realized, it will most certainly demand something more; instrumentality and calculability must be replaced by an organizational climate dominated by mutual obligation, loyalty and trust. Flexibility and inter-organizational arrangements Flexibility might, as illustrated above, be obtained through employment strategies, organizational solutions and attempts at creating an appropriate culture feeding commitment and consent. All this concerns the internal nature of the organization; different kinds and degrees of flexibility may be obtained through the manipulation of the properties of the organization itself. An organization may, however, also obtain flexibility though arrangements with its environment, either through mutual and concerted cooperation with other organizations in order to cope with a troublesome world, or simply by getting rid of the unpredictable and complex part of the business, leaving it to those who are willing to take over. According to Michael Piore and Charles Sabel (1984) industrial districts in the Third Italy operate according to the former arrangement mentioned above. Manufacturing in these districts, they claim, is dominated by small firms operating in the same line of business, specialising and cooperating in manufacturing the final product. Each of the firm specializes in a particular phase of the manufacturing process; then they operate as suppliers to each other. Furthermore, each of them is manned with skilled employees using flexible technology. By virtues of these qualities 16 In contrast to the ‘collective ideal situation’ where such relations are mediated by one or several (informal) representative(s) of the collective.

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– mutual cooperation, specialization, skilled workers and flexible technology – they are able to combine efficiency and flexibility.17 Piore and Sabel refer to this system as ‘flexible specialization’ where flexibility means the ability to handle changing demands while specialization refers to the particular business in question. In the literature flexible specialization is mostly referred to in positive terms, primarily because of the cooperative and humane nature of the system. A quite different characteristic is, however, attributed to those who resort to the latter strategy mentioned above, that is those who have the propensity to outsource everything considered too costly, too inconvenient or too complex to carry on in-house. At the most extreme end, several examples may be found of enterprises that do not have any manufacturing activity of their own (Klein 2001). Instead they just concentrate on activities such as design, marketing and contracting. The production part of the business is contracted out to whoever is willing and whoever wins the bidding competition. Usually this means manufacturers operating in low-cost countries in Eastern Europe, Africa or South East Asia who quite often operate in Export Processing Zones where unions are absent, working regulations few, wages extremely low and working conditions in general terrible. This does not, however, lead to any problem on the part of the ordering company; on the contrary it usually means huge advantages because of the resulting low price of the product. In addition, this leads to considerable flexibility. Suppliers may easily be replaced, either because of considerations regarding the price or other qualities of the product. These companies, then, have abandoned what some consider the most boring part of the business and turned its activities towards the more immaterial and dynamic aspects. Naomi Klein illustrates the point in the following way: ‘… as Hector Liang, former chairman of United Bisquits, has explained: Machines wear out. Cars rust. People die. But what lives on are the brands’ (Klein 2001, 196). In between these extremities, there is a multitude of variations representing different kinds of networks which have different consequences, dependent on the nature of the mutual ties. And the nature of ties may of course affect the level of flexibility since ties usually involve some kind of obligation as well as commitment. Loose ties, then, may mean high levels of flexibility, while close ties may lead to the opposite. The level of flexibility is not, however, exclusively determined by the closeness of the ties. Equally important is the nature of the dependency involved: whether it is a symmetrical or asymmetrical one as far as power relations are concerned. Manufacturers operating in an industrial district belong to a network where power is evenly distributed among its participants. The dependency is mutual, everyone is ‘equally’ dependent on each other, and we have a system which according to Michael Best works according to ‘coordination without hierarchy’ (Best 1990). 17 Something thought of as impossible by those subscribing to the logic of economy of scale. For further discussion of industrial districts, see Becattini (1990), Best (1990), Brusco (1990), Cappechi (1990), Lazerson (1990), Sforzi (1990) and Triglia (1990).

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In contrast, firms contracting out their manufacturing tasks operate in a network where power is unevenly distributed to a great degree. They operate, according to Bennett Harrison (1997), ‘within a logic of concentration without centralization’ meaning the ‘dispersal of production … under the technical and financial control of managers in a relatively small number of big multiregional, multisectoral, multinational corporations and their strategic allies’ (Harrison 1997, 206). In these networks the large actors determine the rules of the game; the small actors have no other choice than to adjust to the rules if they want to survive. Finally, we may find a similar imbalance of power within networks involving traditional assemblers and their sub-suppliers. We may find it in the case of the Japanese ‘keirestu’ networks employed for instance by car manufacturers like Toyota. And we may find it among garment producers like Benetton, which practise the principle of putting out a lot of their manufacturing activities, entailing not only the prospect of cost savings, but improved flexibility as well. The power to force one’s will upon others is also a matter of flexibility. The growing propensity to relocate and outsource business activities ought to be interpreted in such a context. It is not necessarily exclusively confined to a question of cost savings. It may also be a strategy for obtaining improved flexibility in a world perceived as becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable. Klein illustrates this by quoting John Ermatinger, the president of Levi Strauss America’s division, when he is explaining the shut down of 22 plants and the layoff of 13,000 North American workers between November 1997 and February 1999: … Our strategic plan in North America is to focus intensively on brand management, marketing and product design as a means to meet the casual clothing wants and needs of customers. Shifting a significant portion of our manufacturing from the US and Canadian markets to contractors throughout the world will give the company greater flexibility to allocate resources and capital to its brands. These steps are crucial if we are to remain competitive (Klein 2001, 195).

In this way, highly contrasting inter-organizational constructions may contribute to flexibility at the level of each participating organization. The nature and range of this flexibility will, as indicated, be dependent on the nature of the relations and the position of the particular participant in the actual construction. Accordingly, working conditions may be affected in a corresponding way; both position and relations may be decisive for its nature. In this sense, symmetrical relations will certainly give more favourable conditions for all participants compared to asymmetrical relations where a minority decides upon the terms of a minority. The interrelation of flexibility foundations Above, I have discussed how organizational flexibility may be influenced, and I have focused upon what I have considered to be the most important foundations; employment practices, organizational structure, organizational culture and network

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constructions. I have treated each of these foundations on their own, as isolated phenomena independent of each other. This is, of course, an oversimplification of the matter, since they are interrelated, having implications for each other one way or another. The most obvious example is the case where some parts of the business are being wound up, outsourced, and so on. Such changes have an immediate impact on the composition of the workforce as well as the structure of the firm. They might also affect its culture by introducing uncertainty and fear and consequently harm or even ruin what might have been invested in the building of trust. Correspondingly, changes in structures may be conditioned by changes in the nature of the workforce, blurring or displacing frontiers between the core and the periphery. Structural changes (teams, total quality groups, process orientation) may also blur the distinctions between management and workers and as such have an impact on processes of building and maintaining culture. Different manning practices may have a unifying or dividing effect on the workforce, thus affecting the nature of the culture in important ways. To rely upon peripheral workers as much as possible might for instance hamper the propensity for concerted action. Furthermore, it may very well affect skill levels and the ability to handle unexpected occurrences in a proper way. On the other hand, relying mainly on core workers may pave the way for collective resistance that would seriously hamper productivity. In order to avoid this, measures included in management strategies like responsible autonomy (Friedman 1977) might be implemented with the purpose of preventing or countering such reactions. We could have continued this discussion further, but the examples given are, I think, sufficient to illustrate the point mentioned above. The different foundations of organizational flexibility are often related to each other in multiple and complex ways. Changes in one of them might have an impact on the others. Changes in one of them may also be conditioned by certain qualities of the others. Occasionally these relations are obvious, most often they are not. The intention behind an action within an organizational setting may very well be realized, but it may just as easily prove to be the opposite because of organizational dysfunction(s) operating beyond human imagination. This is true in organizational behaviour and change in general, and it is certainly true when it comes to the question of flexibility. To believe that an organization will become more flexible by mainly relying on marginalized and interchangeable workers would be to ignore its complexity. Most probably, such a strategy would lead to rigidity instead of flexibility, and we would be facing what seems to be a contradiction: flexibility leading to rigidity – how is that possible? The answer is dual, and the first aspect is indicated above. Intentions should not be conflated with outcomes; what is expected to happen or is taken for granted may not be achieved simply because of the complex mechanisms involved that make it difficult and often impossible to judge what the results may be. The second answer is related to the concept of flexibility itself. As indicated, flexibility is a notion filled with ambiguity, both regarding content and meaning. Leaving the different associations aside, the concept of flexibility is employed to describe

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people, technology, time, space, wages, employment and organizations in general. Consequently, discussions about its nature and possible impact very often lead to confusion. This may, for instance, be the case in the frequent discussions about employment practices. Quite often such practices are equated with organizational flexibility, but the above discussion illustrates that they are not. On the contrary, used in a cynical way, non-standard employment may perfectly well lead to a rigid organization. In a corresponding way discussions about team organizations may be related to the same problem. Team organizations are often considered as the archetype of the flexible organization, but occasionally they are obviously not. Teams may very well at times impair the ability of an organization to respond to emerging challenges in adequate and efficient ways. The above attempts at clarifying the concept of flexibility by deconstructing it into several categories may therefore help in structuring the debate, both regarding what we are talking about and what it may mean for working conditions. References Abernathy, W.J. (1978), The Productivity Dilemma. Roadblock to Innovation in the Automobile Industry (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press). Ackroyd, S. and Thompson, P. (1999), Organizational Misbehaviour (London: SAGE Publications). Atkinson, J. (1984), ‘The Flexible Firm and the Shape of Jobs to come’, Labour Market Issues 5 (Oxford). —— (1985), ‘Manpower strategies for flexible organizations’, Personnel Management, August. Becattini, G. (1990), ‘The Marshallian industrial district as a socio-economic notion’, in F. Pyke, G. Becattini and W. Sengenberger (eds) Industrial Districts and Inter-firm Co-operation in Italy (Genève: ILO-publications). Best, M. (1990), The New Competition. Institutions of Industrial Restructuring (Cambridge: Polity Press). Bidaux, J.M. (1983), ‘Le cycle et la chaine: les ouvriers manient le derailleur’, Economie et humanism 269. Bradley, H., Erickson, M., Stephenson, C. and Williams, S. (2000), Myths at Work (Oxford: Polity Press). Brusco, S. (1990), ‘The idea of the Industrial District: Its genesis’, in F. Pyke, G. Becattini and W. Sengenberger (eds) Industrial Districts and Inter-firm Co-operation in Italy (Genève: ILO publications). Burns, T. and Stalker, G.M. (1961), The Management of Innovation (London: Tavistock). Cappechi, V. (1990), ‘A history of flexible specialisation and industrial districts in Emilia-Romagna’, in F. Pyke, G. Becattini and W. Sengenberger (eds) Industrial Districts and Inter-firm Co-operation in Italy (Genève: ILO publications). Coriat, B. (1991), Penser à l’envers (Paris: Christian Bourgois Editeur).

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DiMaggio, P. and Powell, W. (1983), ‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’, American Sociological Review 48, 147–60. Doshe, K., Jürgens, U. and Malsh, T. (1985), ‘From Fordism to Toyotism? The Social Organization of the Labor Process in the Japanese Automobile Industry’, Politics and Society 14:2, 115–46. Edwards, P., Collinson, D. and Della Rocca, G. (1995), ‘Workplace Resistance in Western Europe: A preliminary Overview and a Research Agenda’, European Journal of Industrial Relations 1:3 (Sage Publications). Edwards, R. (1979), Contested Terrain. The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, Inc. Publishers). Eilon, S. (1962), Elements of Production Planning and Control (New York: Macmillan). Flanders, A. (1970), Management and Unions (London: Faber). Friedman, A.L. (1977), Industry and Labour. Class Struggle at Work and Monopoly Capitalism (London: Macmillan Press). Hammer, M. and Champy, J. (1995), Reengineering the Corporation. A Manifesto for Business Revolution (London: Nicholas Brealey). Handel, M.J. (2003), The Sociology of Organizations. Classic, Contemporary and Critical Readings (London/New Delhi: SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks). Harrison, B. (1997), Lean and Mean. Why Large Corporations Will Continue to Dominate the Global Economy (New York/London: The Guilford Press). Hodson, R. (1995), ‘Worker Resistance: An Underdeveloped Concept in the Sociology of Work’, Economic and Industrial Democracy 16, 79–110. Hounshell, D.A. (1984), From the American System to Mass Production 1800–1932. The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore/ London: The Johns Hopkins University Press). Huzell, H. (2005), Managenment och motstånd. Offentlig ����������������������������������� sector i omvandling – en fallstudie (������������������������������������� Karlstad University Studies 2005:45). Katz, D. and Kahn, R.L. (1978), The Social Psychology of Organizations, 2nd edn (New York: John Wiley and Sons). Klein, N. (2001), No Logo (London: Flamingo). Kunda, G. (1992), Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation (Temple University Press). Lazerson, M. (1990), ‘Subcontracting in the Modena Knit Wear Industry’, in F. Pyke, G. Becattini and W. Sengenberger (eds) Industrial Districts and Interfirm Co-operation in Italy (Genève: ILO-publications). Linhart, D. (1981), L’appel de la sirène (Paris: Le Sycomore). —— (1982), ‘Au-dela de la norme’, Culture technique 8, 91–8. Lysgaard, S. (1976), Arbeiderkollektivet (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget). Martin, J. (1992), Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press). Maurice, M., Sellier, F. and Silvestre, J.J. (1982), Politique d’education et organisation industrielle en France et en Allemagne (Paris: PUF).

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Monden, Y. (1983), Toyota Production System. Practical Approach to Production Management (������������������������������������������������������� New York: Industrial Engineering and Management Press). Nilssen, T. and Skorstad, E. (1986), Framveksten av en ny produksjonstenkning. Om sammenhengen mellom produksjonsstyring, lay-out og arbeidsvilkår (Oslo: Tano forlag). Nylehn, B. and Skorstad, E. (1982), ‘Teknologi og organisasjon. Om utvikling av teknologi og dens betydning i organisasjoner’, Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning 23. Ohno, T. (1990), L’Esprit Toyota (Paris: Masson). Piore, M. and Sabel, C. (1984), The Second Industrial Divide (New York: Basic Books). Pollert, A. (1988), ‘Dismantling Flexibility’, Capital and Class 34, 42–75, Spring. Rose, M. (1975), Industrial Behaviour. Theoretical Development since Taylor (London: Allen Lane). Rose, N. (1999), Governing the Soul. The Shaping of the Private Self, 2nd edn (London: Free Association Books). Rosenbrock, H.H. (1990), Machines with a Purpose (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Sabel, C. (1982), Work and Politics (Cambridge/Mass.: Cambridge University Press). Schonberger, R. (1986), World Class Manufacturing. The Lessons of Simplicity Applied (�������������������������� New York: The Free Press). Sennett, R. (1999), Det fl������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������� eksible menneske. Eller arbejdets forvandling og personlighedens nedsmeltning (��������������������� Højbjerg: Hovedland). —— (2002), ‘A society of broken eggs’, New Statesman 17 December–7 January 2002. Sforzi, F. (1990), ‘The quantitative importance of Marshallian industrial districts in the Italian economy’, in F. Pyke, G. Becattini and W. Sengenberger (eds) Industrial Districts and Inter-firm Co-operation in Italy (Genève: ILO publications). Shingo, S. (1984), Den nya japanska Produktionsfilosofin (Lidingö/Göteborg: Svenska Managementgruppen/MYSIGMA). Skorstad, E. (1988), ‘Technology and Overall Control: An Example from the Process Industry’, in V. de Keyser, T. Quale, B. Wilpert and S.A. Ruiz Quintanilla (eds) The Meaning of Work and Technological Options (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons). —— (1991), ‘Mass Production, Flexible Specialization and Just-in-Time. Future development trends of industrial production and consequences on conditions of work’, FUTURES, December. —— (1992), ‘From Taylorism to Toyotism in the Norwegian Textile Industry?’, in Kasvio, A. (ed.) Industry without Blue-collar Workers – Perspectives of European Clothing Industry in the 1990s (University of Tampere: Work Research Centre).

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—— (1994/2006), ‘Lean Production, Conditions of Work and Worker Commitment’, Economic and Industrial Democracy 15, 429–55. Reprinted in H. Beynon and T. Nichols (eds) The Fordism of Ford and Modern Management. Fordism and Post-Fordism, vol. 1 (Cheltenham, Northhampton: Edward Elgar, 2006). Solberg, J.J. (1989), ‘Production Planning and Scheduling in CIM’, in I.G. Ritter (ed.) Information Processing 89 (Elsevier Science Publisher B.V. IFIP). Thompson, P. (1989), The Nature of Work (London: Macmillan). Triglia, C. (1990), ‘Work and politics in the Third Italy’s industrial districts’, in F. Pyke, G. Becattini and W. Sengenberger (eds) Industrial Districts and Interfirm Co-operation in Italy (Genève: ILO publications). Vollman, T.E. et al. (1991), Manufacturing Planning and Control Systems, 3rd edn (Homewood-Illinois: Irwin). Voss, C. and Clutterbuck, D. (1989), Just-in-Time. A Global Status Report (Berlin: IFS Publications/Springer-Verlag). Whyte, W.F. and Dalton, M. (1977), Money and Motivation. An Analysis of Incentives in Industry (Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers). Womack, J.P., Jones, D.T. and Roos, D. (1990), The Machine that Changed the World (New York: Rawson Ass.).

Chapter 3

The Impact of Flexibility on Employee Morale and Involvement: Large-Sample Findings for UK Workplaces Michael Rose

Introduction What can recent research tell us about the subjective effect of the spread of flexibility in the workplace and in employment practice? In particular, what can be said about how workplace employee relations are experienced, or about the kind of attachment to the organization expressed by workers? At the level of workplaces, this matter is important for HRM practitioners. For a society as a whole, the cumulative consequences of workplace outcomes help to condition and express its character. The present chapter will examine flexibility outcomes in the UK in such a perspective. It will offer a new type of evidence, relating to the subjective outcome of experience of flexibility by employees. The evidence is thought to be novel in the debate over flexibility. But such a claim must be evaluated in terms of the content of the debate itself. It is important, then, to start with a résumé of what are taken to be its main streams of discussion. Flexibility and social outcomes Definitional contention  The debate on flexibility is a multi-channel dialogue, plagued by the ambiguities examined in depth by Egil J. Skorstad in Chapter 2, and quite often a dialogue of the deaf. As Skorstad reminds us, there is an enduring difficulty over definitions. The argument that began soon after the initial delineation – if that was what it was – of an ideal typical flexible firm (Atkinson 1984), was complicated by a perhaps premature suggestion (Hakim 1987) that the UK might well be on the way to becoming a flexible economy. As Pollert (1988) commented in concluding her classic demolition of Atkinson’s own specification for the flexible firm, the terms ‘flexibility’, ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ were already starting to trap minds in a dualistic employment model resting on a ‘quagmire of confused assumptions’ (1988, 311). This was a somewhat harsh judgement, perhaps, but it has not so far been overturned, despite some valiant attempts to do so (Proctor et al. 1994). As Skorstad   Atkinsons’s first (1984) paper was little more than a rough sketch three pages long in a personnel management magazine. It was to become one of the most cited references ever in the social sciences of work and employment.

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notes, none the less, there was a certain irony in Pollert’s lengthy hesitations about the very utility of the term flexibility itself in her 1988 article, given the title (Farewell to Flexibility?) of Pollert’s (1991) major (and still valuable) collection of studies pressing the attack further, but not quite home. The still hesitant questionmark in the title proved to be well chosen. It has become a long goodbye. All the definitional difficulties have remained – indeed, they have multiplied – but the term itself has been resistant to all cries for abolition. So we are stuck with it. I see no alternative, either, to living with labels such as ‘numerical flexibility’ and ‘functional flexibility’. As Verdouris (2007) points out, many other approximate equivalents exist, such as internal versus external flexibility (DavisBlake and Uzzi 1993), clan and market (Ouchi 1980), dynamic and static (Deyo 1997) or organization-focused and job-focused employment relations (Tsui et al. 1995). But none has built such a following as the original two. For fieldwork oriented researchers they do require much further specification. For example, how far does the term functional flexibility confuse at least two distinct types of job enlargement (O’Reilly 1992, 370–73) and possibly four (Rose 2008, 17–18)? It certainly comes in very different types and sizes. It is also important to recognize that it is a long time since employers made all the running in the invention of new practices under the flexibility banner; as Harriet Bradley reminds us in posing the question ‘whose flexibility?’ in Chapter 4, an employee oriented flexibility problematic has gradually emerged, organized around the terms flexitime and flexicurity. Strategy versus improvisation Several contributors to Pollert’s Farewell to Flexibility? (1991) made short work of the idea that flexibility was a novel practice; historically speaking, it was easy to show that such an idea was indefensible. What these critics overlooked, Bradley argues, was the power of the term as an organizing concept – or as she says, myth – for employers, politicians, and theorists of a business model of society to rally, or constrain, support for globalized capitalism. But has formation of flexibility regimes, as a practical exercise, for the most part relied upon some such a central idea? Do employers or organizers actually need one? How far is implementation of flexibility to be viewed as calculative even in a narrow sense? On this, too, there has been vigorous debate over how far policy decisions affecting flexibility practice at organization or workplace level are careful, well structured, and pre-meditated. In the UK, the commitment to a strategic approach to employee relations (or technological and product innovation for that matter) has long been under empirical scrutiny (Hakim 1990; Proctor et al. 1994: Rose 1994). Ackroyd and Proctor (1998), in a well-targeted search in the UK for a strategic HRM approach linked to flexibility, comment: The ‘strategic planning’ type of firm, in which development is orchestrated within a general overview of planned development, and which may involve buffering constituent parts of a business from the rigours of the market-place in order to maximize market advantages in the medium to long term, fits only very few of the firms in our group of manufacturers (1998, 170).

The Impact of Flexibility on Employee Morale and Involvement

45

The current (uneasy) consensus with regard to flexibility regimes seems to be that a UK pattern of extemporization and pragmatism may prevail more widely than supposed. With regard to functional flexibility, at least, it appears that the management approach throughout Europe may be closer to this pattern than might have been expected (Friedrich et al. 1998). Choice of regime As noted, Pollert (1988, 311) had also questioned the longer-term utility of a distinction between numerical and functional flexibility. This has proved far less prescient. As research material accumulated the terms became established as the main constructs in empirical critique, with Kalleberg (2001) producing evidence, and some powerful arguments, in favour of regarding them as complementary rather than alternative modes of application. Since then Cappelli and Neumark (2004) have documented, at least for US manufacturing, some tendency for internal flexibility to reduce involuntary turnover; but in all industrial sectors, these authors found, parts of the permanent workforce were leached away in non-standard employment. The findings to be presented are, incidentally, relevant to this discussion, though this chapter does not seek to contribute to the empirical underpinnings of a complementarity/alternatives controversy. Critique of social implications Whatever the precise conceptual or empirical matter in contention, flexibility as a societal object is often under implicit examination even when workplace life is the explicit focus. Indeed, influential treatments from a social philosophy perspective have started at the societal level itself (Sennett �������������������������������������������������������������������� 2000). As often noted, a business oriented ������������������������� discourse of flexibility shifts effortlessly between description, prediction and prescription, and does so in a remorselessly optimistic tone.������������������������������������������������������ Wallace ����������������������������������������������������� (2002) has pointed out the cheerily sanguine tenor of most managerially oriented treatments, which are often undemanding in their expectations of evidence, and economical in supplying it. Since the 1980s the flexible firm, too often equated with the high performance workplace (de Menezes and Wood 2006), is typically viewed as something that will ‘deliver’, not just in terms of economic success, but in terms of moral consensus, both within firms and at a societal level. Many management oriented texts have commented favourably too on the eventual attitudinal consequences of flexibility; it is almost possible for two writers to document them without any overlap in the sources cited: see Kelliher and Riley (2003) for a problem oriented overview. Yet some academic writers close to everyday HRM practice have remained sceptical. Just how far workplace practices are ‘flexible friends’, producing the psychological effects claimed for them by management enthusiasts, has been   In preparatory work, the problems of measuring functional flexibility were examined in detail, leading to the conclusion that the UK has a great deal less than often imagined (Rose 2008). Though the logical argument in favour of seeing numerical and functional flexibility as alternatives is strong, the UK data is consistent with widespread combination.

46

Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

disputed by organizational psychologists bidding for leadership of the Psychological Contract approach to HRM (��������������������������������������������� Guest 1998, 1997; Rousseau 1998, 1995, 1990, 1989)���������������������������������������������� : see especially the 1998 Special Issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior. A sustained, research grounded critique in the UK (����������������� Guest and Conway 1997; Guest et al. 1998; Guest 2004a, 2004b)������������������������������������� , dating from the late 1980s, throws doubt on the psychological effects that are claimed for flexibility practices alone. A precondition for any positive effects seems to be a high degree of management commitment to traditional workplace practices such as pursuit of fairness. Any assertion that flexibility can, in and of itself, be the source of a new moral bond for contemporary capitalism has also been scrutinized, most interestingly, from the pespective of the legal assumptions underlying a purported new psychological contract; as such, it has been found confused (Collins 2006; Stone 2006). Incidence of flexibility in the UK Sociological analysis at the macro (‘whole society’) level must first establish how widely flexibility practice has spread. Although often seen – and certainly promoted by the UK government – as a European exemplar of flexible work practice, the incidence of flexible working in the UK is far from clear. No evidence exists that it is, overall, wider than in other large EU countries. The best available internationally comparative data (Brewster et al. 2000) are less help here than they might be. They are handicapped by low response-rates, the truncation of smaller workplaces, and a concern in publications primarily with interaction of new HRM styles with traditional models of the employment relationship. (In any case these data are not as yet available in the public domain.) While undertaking the present analysis the writer took steps to establish more exactly the extent of flexibility practice in the UK, as shown in the Workplace Employment Relations Surveys of 1998 (WERS 4) and 2004 (WERS 5). These form part of a long running linked series of UK enquiries on UK management– employee relations (Cully et al. 1999; Millward et al. 2000; Chaplin et al. 2005; Kersley et al. 2006; Whitfield and Huxley 2007). The preparatory work (Rose 2008) enabled a more precise empirical reference to be provided for defining associations between types of flexible employment practices and the outlook and morale of employees affected by them. Otherwise, this chapter will adopt wellestablished distinctions between numerical (or ‘������������������������������������ contractual’) flexibility, temporal flexibility, and functional flexibility. It will not be able to examine the effects of geographical flexibility (Vielle and Walthery 2003) or remunerational flexibility, for want of suitable evidence. The first three modes of flexibility are to be seen in combination as the core of a flexibility regime at workplace level; and in so far as it is productive to do so, at national level. (The term ‘regime’ as used here will be simply descriptive; it does not imply prior existence of any policies intended to produce flexibility as a system in line with some strategic plan.)

The Impact of Flexibility on Employee Morale and Involvement

47

For each type of flexibility, the examination will indicate the scale of penetration of practice in the UK using up to three separate measures. At each stage of analysis, a set of empirical associations will be presented, indicating whether a given practice may have positive or negative effects upon workplace employee relations climate, and upon employee commitment to the employing organization. An overall evaluation will then be made, suggesting the implications of the findings for wider debates within the overall flexibility of work problematic. Data The UK Workplace Employment Relations Surveys of 1998 and 2004 (WERS 4, WERS 5) provide large sample data on the development of flexible employment practices and working procedures in Britain in the period from 1993 to 2004, covering the basics of numerical and functional flexibility in British workplaces, and sufficiently detailed also to make a few grounded inferences about the overall philosophy of management followed in the employing organization. The two workplace surveys were accompanied on each occasion by an employee survey providing linked data on employee subjectivity (work attitudes, sense of wellbeing) in the years 1998 and 2004 for two very large employee samples. The degree of flexibility shown by the workplace surveys will be considered first. Numerical flexibility Non-standard employment contracts  A key indicator of overall flexibility is the form – and to some extent, the implied ‘spirit’ – of the contract of employment (Capelli 1995). To recapitulate, the original claim (Atkinson 1984) of a rapid move towards the flexible firm rested on a sharp contrast between relatively advantaged core employees on the one hand, and peripheral employees fated to employment disadvantage on the other; core employees would benefit from a traditional standard model employment contract; the latter would offer an explicit undertaking, or embody an underlying understanding, that the employee should expect steady and long-term employment. Together with such security of employment there would go a package of other benefits, guarantees, opportunities, and undertakings about the employee’s situation in the firm. Peripheral workers, on the other hand, would be obliged to accept non-standard contracts in which any expectation of long-term employment would be replaced by an association defined as, or tacitly recognized as likely to be, provisional, short-term, easily dissolved, and relatively distant in terms of personal involvement. There would be, it had been forecast, a very wide spread of such precarious employment, shown by a rise in the number of temporary employees – staff hired via employment agencies, or direct employees with limited term contracts typically of short duration – and a growing number of home-based workers who never came to the establishment in person.

Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

48

An important base indicator of numerical flexibility is objective job security. Fully guaranteed job security for any group of employees was already quite rare in 1998; only 11 per cent of workplaces offered it for workers in any one or more of the nine main skill levels of the official occupational classification (Elias et al. 1999; Elias and McKnight 2001); by 2004, only 7 per cent of workplaces offered such contracts. Nor do the raw data suggest any reluctance of employers to enforce severance. In 1998, 27 per cent of workplaces had reduced the size of at least one or other work section in the previous 12 months, though not in all cases by means of compulsory redundancies; in 2004, when more detailed data on severances was collected, 27 per cent workplace reported actual redundancies, though only 5 per cent reported more than 25 redundancies; and no less than 43 per cent reported dismissals for other reasons. Table 3.1

Numerical flexibility: Employers’ use of non-standard contracts, 1998 and 2004 1998 Establishments Employees weighted weighted n % n %

0 1 2 3

1,082 706 301 93 2,192

49 33 14 4 100

644 653 525 369 2,191

29 30 24 17 100

2004 Establishments Employees weighted weighted n % n % 685 714 485 178 1,295

33 35 24 9 100

689 697 502 189 2,062

33 34 24 9 100

Table 3.1 shows the proportions of establishments with over 10 employees reporting use of agreed non-standard (NS) forms of employment contract, in particular fixed-term contract and temporary employees often hired through agencies, and often working part-time. Part-time work otherwise will not be regarded as a nonstandard employment practice here owing to the problems raised by Tilley (1992) and Doogan (2001, 2005); some of the part-time workers no doubt had jobs that were marginal and precarious, but this component cannot be identified in the data.  There was no way of distinguishing those part-time jobs possibly regarded by an employer as readily dispensable and other part-time jobs which are (for example) created to fill employee demand for them. Something may be lost by this but probably not much. Part-time work is quite often preferred to full-time work by people doing it. Any insecurity of tenure is not comparable to that of limited term contracts or agency ‘temping’. Part-time work has often been found to be positively associated with enhanced employee job satisfaction. Conceptual difficulties also plague the study of part-time work. Is a job calling for five or six hours of work per week conceptually identical with one calling for almost 30 hours? Doogan’s (2005) review of the evidence for Europe concludes emphatically: ‘The rise of long-term, part-time employment for women suggests that atypical employment does not lead to labour

The Impact of Flexibility on Employee Morale and Involvement

49

It will be noted that removal of small workplaces (5–9 persons) alters size of the samples; thus the sample for generalising to all UK workplaces with over 10 employees falls dramatically, to 1,295; the sample weighted for generalization to all UK employees in workplaces with 10+ falls, far less, to 2,077. Up to four specific practices could be reported, but so few workplaces had four practices that, to simplify presentation, they have been merged with those reporting three. The data simply indicate some use of a given practice at a workplace; they say nothing about the extent of use. However, some such data is available though not shown or used here; to a limited degree, using more forms of NS contract tends to be accompanied by more intense use of given practices. The simple count data might provide some guide to how far use of NS contracts was deliberate, systematic, and probably policy driven; for example, 75 per cent of establishments reporting no use of NS contracts said a strategic plan covered the workplace; 92 per cent reporting four NS practices reported having a strategy. Similarly, proportions of employees relate to those in workplaces with a given level of use of NS contracts. Inspection of the table shows that the proportion of employees not reporting any NS practices rose from 29 per cent to 33 per cent between the 1998 and 2004 surveys; meanwhile the proportion of those employed in workplaces using three or more NS contract forms fell from 17 per cent to 9 per cent. The actual proportions of employees with NS contracts must be estimated directly from the employee samples. This will be done here, and throughout this chapter, with managerial employees removed. In 1998 (2004 following in brackets) 91.7 per cent (91.3 per cent) of non-managerial employees considered they had permanent posts; 4.2 per cent (5.0 per cent) reported temporary contracts; 3.5 per cent (3.3 per cent) said they had fixed-term contracts; and in 1998 only a further tiny percentage reported other arrangements. (There is no discernable association with contract reported and level of the employer’s use of NS contracts.) A greater resort to use of NS contracts at the workplace might be expected, other things being equal, to depress sense of worth and support a more critical attitude on the part of non-managerial employees towards the workplace. Table 3.2 market detachment but its opposite in the mainstreaming of new employment practices that facilitate the long-term retention of labour’ (p. 86). Fevre (2007) develops Doogan’s critique of the misuse of data (more often, ignorance of it) by commentators. Part-time workers in WERS 5 were as a whole significantly more likely than those working 31 or more hours to agree with the statement: ‘I feel my job is secure in this workplace’ (p>=0.000).  The WERS 4 data of 1998 allow a weighting for the component of strategy which was specifically concerned with employment contract policy. This has little association with the use of NS contracts.  Managerial employees were excluded from the employee samples examined here because the focus of the questionnaire referred mainly to non-managerial employees. In particular, manager occupations could not be named as reference occupations by workplace informants when describing the extent of functional flexibility practices. In comparisons of the 1998 and 2004 employee samples, the employees of the workplaces with 5–9 payroll covered in WERS 5 were excluded. (In most cases, including them barely alters results.)

5.

4.

1. 2. 3.

5.85 3.37 3.63 3.53 3.42

5.86 3.46 3.64 3.50 3.38

-1.51 2.05 3.60

-0.22 -6.58

WERS 4 (1998) Two or more t non-standard forms used

ns * ***

ns *** 3.75 3.60 3.45

6.11 3.59

No or just one nonstandard forms used

3.71 3.62 3.48

5.75 3.45

-2.61 1.74 1.56

-7.00 -9.07

WERS 5 (2004) Two or more t non-standard forms used

** + *

*** ***

Sig. t

*** p