Reclaiming the Concept of Flexibility

Bengt Furåker, Kristina Håkansson and Jan Ch. Karlsson

Chapter 1 in Flexibility and Stability in Working Life, 2007, pp 1-17 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract There is something rotten about the concept of ‘flexibility’. It has for a long time been a key concept in the political working-life debate, as well as in research in this area. It has, for example, been stressed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as an essential part of a regenerated economic development, and it has underlain changes in EU labour law. And research on flexibility is immense. In March 2006, a search on Google Scholar gave 1,080,000 hits for ‘flexibility’ and 1,400,000 for ‘flexible’. But all is not well. The literature is not only abundant — it is also incongruous and confusing. The many meanings of the term make flexibility an excellent basis for forming ideological and value-laden discourses on the new working life. It is not uncommon to play on these paradoxes by formulating oxymorons, such as the title of Dore’s (1986) book Flexible Rigidities,or the chapter ‘Inflexible Flexibility’ (Elger and Fairbrother 1992).

Keywords: Labour Market; Social Protection; Collective Agreement; Temporary Contract; Employment Protection Legislation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-23538-0_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230235380

DOI: 10.1057/9780230235380_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().