Strategies to reach flexibility

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Fragmentation? The future of work in Europe in a
global economy Roma, 8 9 October 2008
Strategies to reach flexibility
Key findings on employment relations and work
organisation in work package 12.3
Ursula Holtgrewe FORBA, Vienna
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Flexibility and restructuring common assumptions
and challenges

• Flexibility as a general requirement on global,
  saturated ... markets
• Outsourcing to increase numerical flexibility
  while retaining functional flexibility and
  commitment of core segment (flexible firm,
  Atkinson 1984)?
• Increasingly networked production to increase
  functional flexibility (Powell 1990)

• Organisation theory dilemma of flexibility
  versus efficiency (Thompson 1967)? ??Flexibility
  may be something companies want to get rid of!
• Increasing competition between segments (Rubery
  2006)?
• Increasing contradictions between purposes and
  unintended outcomes

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Flexibility and restructuring General findings

• Restructuring of value chains does not always
  increase flexibility but may have other aims
• cost-cutting
• Closeness to markets/customers
• Access to knowledge
• Requirements for flexibility may be passed on
  along the lines of power and position in the
  chain.
• Intendedly or unintendedly, restructuring
  generates its own demands for flexibility.

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Relocations and flexibility

• Initially, mostly relocation of standardised and
  operative functions and processes
• Clothing Taylorised production
• Software coding and testing
• Spatial distance limits flexibility and
  responsiveness
• Quality problems
• communication
• logistics

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Flexible employment

• Embedded with national labour market institutions
  (fx DK flexicurity, AT Freelance contracts)? -
  no overall patterns
• Traditional, numerically flexible arrangements (
  secondary labour markets)?
• Seasonal work in food industry (segmented along
  ethnic lines)?
• Clothing Small businesses and informal sector in
  Italy
• Initial fixed-term contracts in public sector

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Flexible employment

• New options
• Public sector services outsourcing to escape
  secure and tenured employment
• Meat Inc. DK deboning relocated to East Germany,
  employment of fixed-term, temporary Polish
  migrants
• Business-Software DE implementation on customer
  sites left to consultancies and self-employed
  consultants
• Proactively seeking access to new, lower-cost
  employee groups (where numerical flexibility
  comes cheaper)?

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Flexible work organisation

• Expansion of value chains multiplication of
  interfaces
• Standardisation/Modularisation enabling further
  outsourcing
• Emerging specialists for flexibility (in
  particular business functions)?
• Call centres (numerically and functionally)?
• Intermediaries in clothing or research
  (functional)?
• New interfacing jobs and transactional labour
• Intended and unintended externalisations to lower
  end of value chain

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Flexible work organisation standardisation

• technological/hierarchical/contractual
  specification of products and services (fx
  service level agreements)?
• (Remote) surveillance
• Workflow systems across companies
• Documentation
• Often at odds with real work

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Work complexity
Source Greenan, Kalugina Walkowiak, 2007 33

• Uneven picture (increase in Northern
  countries/NL, decrease UK, DE, IT, ES)?

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Flexible work organisation ad-hoc flexibility

• Standardisation complemented/compensated by
  contextualisation and tacit knowledge (at both
  ends of value chain)? how to interpret an SLA or
  specification ...
• Multiplication of perspectives
• Research marketing
• Customer relationship, problem solving and
  contracts with clients
• Interfaces up and down value chain
• BUT Overall speed-up of work

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Limitations to flexibility

• Space
• limited mobility of workers
• Logistics of global relocation (nearshoring
  rather than global lowest cost)?
• Time
• Overall speed-up of work
• Time to develop co-operation and trust
• Standardisation ? Contextualisation
• Particular workers bargaining power

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Mapping restructuring and flexibility
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References

• Atkinson, J. (1984) 'Manpower strategies for
  flexible organisations', Personnel Management,
  vol. 16, n 8, p. 28-31.
• Flecker, J., Holtgrewe, U., Schönauer, A.
  Gavroglou, S. P. (2008) 'Value chain
  restructuring and company strategies to reach
  flexibility. WORKS deliverable 12.3', Wien.
• Greenan, N., Kalugina, E. Walkowiak, E. (2007)
  'The transformation of work? D9.2.2 of the WORKS
  project - Trends in work organisation', Centre
  d'Etudes de l'Emploi, Noisy-le-Grand.
• Powell, W. W. (1990) 'Neither market nor
  hierarchy Network forms of organization', in
  Staw, B. M. Cummings, L. L. (eds.) Research in
  organizational behavior vol. 12, JAI Press,
  Greenwich CT, p. 295-336.
• Rubery, J. (2005) 'Labor Markets and
  Flexibility', in Ackroyd, S. et al. (eds.) The
  Oxford Handbook of Work and Organization, Oxford
  UP, Oxford, p. 31-51.
• Rubery, J. (2006) Segmentation theory thirty
  years on, European Work and Employment Research
  Centre, University of Manchester, Manchester,
  vxu.se/ehv/cafo/iwplms/papers/rubery_segmentation.
  doc.
• Thompson, J. D. (1967) Organizations in Action,
  McGraw-Hill, New York et al.

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Thank you!