Functional flexibility: merely reacting or acting strategically?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425459810238800 |
| Pages | 504-523 |
| Published date | 01 October 1998 |
| Date | 01 October 1998 |
| Author | Andrea Friedrich,Rüdiger Kabst,Wolfgang Weber,Maria Rodehuth |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Employee
Relations
20,5
504
Functional flexibility: merely
reacting or acting
strategically?
Andrea Friedrich and Rüdiger Kabst
University of Paderborn, Germany
Wolfgang Weber and Maria Rodehuth
Paderborner Stadthallenbetriebsgesellschaft, Paderborn, Germany
Introduction
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. 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.
Functional flexibility
In a variety of possible manifestations labour flexibility is the key to the
enhancement of competitiveness in a climate of rapid technological change
(Cordery, 1989, p. 13). Many firms have developed different methods of adapting
to economic and business changes in which the modification of employment
practices plays a central role (Pinfield and Atkinson, 1988, p. 18). 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 (Bleicher, 1991, p. 3). 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 te amwork and distract
attention from customer needs (Leveson, 1996, p. 36). A second reason is that
Employee Relations,
Vol. 20 No. 5, 1998, pp. 504-523
© MCBUniversity Press, 0142-5455
Functional
flexibility
505
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 (Ruf, 1991, p. 30). 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 (Olmsted and Smith, 1989, p. 51). So in
recent times, more and more organisations have increasingly sought to adopt
work structures which are characterised by their flexibility and adaptability
(Wood, 1989). In many instances this has involved redesigning jobs around a
functionally flexible worker (Cordery et al., 1993, p. 705; Katz, 1985).
Different types of labour flexibility
In the discussion of labour flexibility the model of the “flexible firm” developed
at the Institute of Manpower Studies (Atkinson, 1984; Atkinson and Gregory,
1986; Atkinson and Meager, 1986; IMS, 1986) has enjoyed widespread
acceptance, despite its conceptual simplicity and lack of theoretical
underpinnings (Pinch et al., 1991, p. 208; Pollert 1988).
One approach to employment flexibility sees four broad categories:
numerical flexibility, functional flexibility, distancing, and pay flexibility
(Olmsted and Smith 1989, p. 51; Pinfield and Atkinson, 1988, p. 18). Firms use
these types of employment flexibility in different dimensions depending on
their specific competitive circumstances, the business strategy they develop to
meet this competitive situation, and the constraints and opportunities they face
as they attempt to adjust their employment policies (Pinfield and Atkinson
1988, p. 19).
We will confine the discussion to functional flexibility – the ability of firms to
adjust and deploy the skills of workers over a broad range of tasks to match the
changing tasks because of changes in the nature of demand, production
methods or technology (IMS, 1986; Olmsted and Smith, 1989, p. 51).
These different types of flexibility or management strategies have the effect
of restructuring the labour market in firms into “core” and “peripheral”
workers. Simplified, the core group consists of multiskilled, permanent
employees, who are also flexible in working time, in terms of adjusting more
closely to production demands. The peripheral group provides numerical
flexibility in the form of, for example, less job secu rity, part-time work, working
on temporary contracts, or being involved in sub-contracting (Atkinson 1984, p.
29; Bagguley, 1990, p. 737; NEDO, 1986).
To summarise, we can distinguish two dimensions of flexibility. At the core,
the emphasis is on functional flexibility; shifting to the periphery, numerical
flexibility becomes important. The quantitative dimension focuses on an outer
layer of peripheral workers. In contrast to the core employees, these employees
have poorer conditions, which are more directly determined by the market, and
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