 An entropy-based measurement of working time flexibilityJordi Olivella, Albert Corominas and Rafael Pastor European Journal of Operational Research, 2010, vol. 200, issue 1, 253-260 Abstract: Working time flexibility is of major concern to companies, and must be established by reaching arrangements with workers. Comparing flexibility arrangements is far from easy. Measures of flexibility that assume a probability distribution of future demand are not really measuring flexibility, but rather risk. We define a space of states made up of possible working hours over several periods, and apply three measures of flexibility to it: the proportion of feasible states, the average cost and a new entropy-based measure of flexibility (EMF). The EMF is based on Shannon's entropy. We propose the use of three measures simultaneously for comparing the flexibility provided by a working time arrangement. Two examples are given: one that assesses the flexibility generated by using time accounts and overtime in a working time accounts (WTAs) modality, and one that compares the WTAs and hiring and firing (H&F) modalities. Keywords: Flexibility; measure; Hiring; and; firing; Shannon's; entropy; Working; time; Working; time; accounts (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:200:y:2010:i:1:p:253-260 Access Statistics for this article European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.