Overstaffing: Cost to be reduced, or slack to be encouraged?

Stéphane Deschaintre () and Salomon Bernier-Khedache ()
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Stéphane Deschaintre: ISG - ISG International Business School [Paris]
Salomon Bernier-Khedache: IRG - Institut de Recherche en Gestion - UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12 - Université Gustave Eiffel

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Abstract: Overstaffing is commonly seen as a cost that should be reduced. However, our research, based on two industrial cases, presents company managers who advocate it. To analyze this counterintuitive result, we use the concept of organizational slack. The arguments of the managers are then structured around functions of organizational slack: overstaffing allows them to prepare for the future and to preserve their employees. Showing overstaffing as a slack to be favored is unusual in the present context, and questions more broadly the widespread representations of a workforce that must necessarily be reduced. Our research also sheds light on the concept of organizational slack by showing that it can be consciously rationalized by managers, and therefore be part of a reasoned managerial logic.

Keywords: overstaffing; organizational slack; industry; labour costs; productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-09-02
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Published in Gérer et Comprendre. Annales des Mines, 2024, 157, pp.3-12

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04893058

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