Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life

A European Perspective

Helge Ramsdal, Egil J. Skorstad

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754674207
• eBook ISBN: 9781317134794
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

What are we actually talking about when we talk of flexibility in organizational settings? Do flexible forms of organization lead to varied, challenging and autonomous work or do they have a negative impact on working conditions? These questions are confronted by a group of specialist authors including Stephen Ackroyd, Harriet Bradley, Jan Ch. Karlsson, Philippe Mossé and Michael Rose, who discuss the concept of flexibility in relation to employment practices, organizational structure, cultural peculiarities and network arrangements in France, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the UK. While the question of workplace flexibility has been much debated in recent years, the main issues discussed have been the practice of non-standard forms of employment such as part-time work. This book is distinctive in dealing with flexibility related to organizational arrangements, organizational culture and network arrangements, and in assessing the combined effects of different arrangements in terms of manpower, structure, culture and networks on flexibility.

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 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 part-time 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.

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 non-standard 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 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 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, family-friendly 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.

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.

’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 non-flexible. 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 firm-specific 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-standa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Ambiguity of Flexibility
• 3 The Impact of Flexibility on Employee Morale and Involvement: Large-Sample Findings for UK Workplaces
• 4 Whose Flexibility? British Employees’ Responses to Flexible Capitalism
• 5 A Package of Flexibility?
• 6 Protected, Firm-Specific, and Scarce: Explanations of Non-Standard Forms of Employment
• 7 Combining Flexibility and Workers’ Motivation: Lessons from a Study on Italian and French Hospitals
• 8 Striving for Flexibility, Attaining Resistance: Culture Clashes in the Swedish Rail Industry
• 9 The Re-Organization of Manufacturing and the Emergence of a Flexible Economy in the UK
• 10 The Quest for Flexibility and Governmental Regulations of Working Life: The Case of the 2005 Norwegian Worker Protection and Working Environment Act
• 11 What’s Special About the Nordic Countries? On Flexibility, Globalization and Working Life
• 12 Concluding Remarks: The Complex Dynamism of the Flexible Organization
• Index