FLEXIBILITY

Flexibility

Flexibility

Functional Flexibility

The term functional flexibility will be defined and distinguished from other dimensions of flexibility. Instruments for raising functional flexibility will be presented and critically discussed. The central question is whether functional flexibility is implemented as an operatively designed measure with which European companies choose to face short-term economic constraints, or whether this approach represents a systematic and long-term measure within the framework of human resource management. (Karuppan 2006 p13-18)

It is to be dealt with in three steps. In order to make statements on the relevance of functional flexibility it is first necessary to analyse the extent to which European jobs have moved towards functional enhancement during the past three years. The degree to which the instrument of job rotation is disseminated in European firms will be enquired into in the second step.

Job rotation is considered a central element within the frame of the discussion of functional flexibility. The third step will be a statistical analysis of whether job rotation in European enterprises tends to represent a solitary short-term instrument or whether, on the other hand, the implementation of job rotation is accompanied by a more long-term oriented integration of personnel strategies. (Richman 2008 p.15-19)

In a variety of possible manifestations labour flexibility is the key to the enhancement of competitiveness in a climate of rapid technological change. Many firms have developed different methods of adapting to economic and business changes in which the modification of employment practices plays a central role.

In the past, organisations tried to govern the increasing complexity of tasks with division and specialisation of labour, but it seems that we have reached the limit of possibilities in this direction. One reason is that with professional specialisation the departments of organisations have tended to develop their own subcultures, which can cause conflicts and problems over integration and build barriers between functions, inhibit teamwork and distract attention from customer needs. (Karuppan 2006 13-18)

A second reason is that strong, temporary team structures gain in importance, starting with the trend that a falling share of jobs can be completely formalised and thus electronically automated, while on the other hand the share of jobs with a high degree of complexity is constantly growing. This development has clear repercussions for the company's hierachical structure, the company's internal formalism, the specific communicational structure, and also the spatial and temporal dimensions of human resource management. For the employer, labour flexibility is the ability to quickly reshape the existing supply in terms of configuration, deployment, and cost. So in recent times, more and more organisations have increasingly sought to adopt work structures which are characterised by their flexibility and adaptability. In many instances this has involved redesigning jobs around a functionally flexible worker. (Grugulis 2006 45-59)

Functional flexibility is often associated with different models of work systems such as job enlargement, job enrichment, job rotation, and semi-autonomous work groups, which represent a reaction to the Tayloristic work system associated with scientific management. (Richman 2008 183-197)

Job enlargement consists of expanding the field of activity horizontally, ...