HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGERS AND FLEXIBILITY OF LABOUR

Human Resource Managers and Flexibility of Labour

Human Resource Managers and Flexibility of Labour

Introduction

The learned argument on work flexibility has been going on for rather some time already. However, this does not signify that the content of the argument over the time is the same. On the opposing, we glimpse a clear move in the aim of the vigilance of the flexibility researchers. In the starting of the 1980s, the argument on work flexibility had a powerful ideological character. A allotment of commentators throughout that time span - particularly those who were associated to the trade unions - considered of work flexibility as a widespread scheme of employers and managers to refurbish the power in the businesses which they lost throughout the 1970s. Later on, in the 1980s, we glimpse the increase of (normative) forms with esteem to (labour) flexibility, like for demonstration the form of the “flexible firm” put ahead by Atkinson (1984, 1985) and in our homeland, Bolwijn and Kumpe (1990) and Volberda (1992). In the starting of the 1990s it became clear that the flexibility contention “suffered from several theoretical and empirical shortcomings” (Blyton and Morris, 1992). However, since that designated day, rather many of work has been finished with esteem to the last point. On the one hand there has been a large number of publications on nationwide and worldwide tendencies in work flexibility, founded on quantitative facts and numbers from surveys. Examples of these are Brewster and his colleagues from Cranfied University (Brewster, 1995; Brewster et al., 1994; Mayne et al., 1996) but furthermore by other ones like Casey (1991), Bielenski et al. (1992) and, in our own homeland, Delsen (1995, 1996). On the other hand, we glimpse a increasing number of case investigations on flexible work practices, from which investigators trial to get more qualitative insight into the things that actually occur inside companies. Examples of these are Hunter and McInnes (1992), Geary (1992) and with us, Warmerdam (1992) and Vos and Buitelaar (1996). A latest tendency is to trial to blend quantitative and qualitative study procedures with the objective of connecting data about what is going on with insight into how this is occurrence (see furthermore Mayne et al., 1996). Our study should be glimpsed as an demonstration of this last set about, whereas the most focus has been prepared on the accumulating of qualitative data.

With esteem to the theoretical shortcomings, less advancement has been made. Most focus has been prepared upon the inquiry of if there is a connection or not between work flexibility and HRM strategy. At first, Brewster (1995) and his colleagues (see Brewster et al., 1994) could not find such a connection, but more lately (1996), they found out that not less than in some nations like the UK, Norway and Sweden there is a connection between flexibility and HRM. But in nations like Germany and France afresh they could not find such a link. In our attitude it is a little astonishing that Brewster ...