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This article examines the relationship between labour market flexibility and efficiency and social protection expenditures. Building on the theories of government expenditures and the empirical lit...

We discuss the relevance of the internationally adopted methodology for modelling labour market flows and comparing labour market flexibility. This is based on a two-state labour market mod...

Flexibility proponents assert that rigid Latin American labour markets impede economic expansion and job growth; they advocate reforming labour codes through increased flexibility. Critics argue that heightened labour flexibility exacerbates inequality without expanding employment. From this perspective, precarious employment and inequality are remedied by strengthening labour’s bargaining power. Chile’s maintenance of flexible labour reforms adopted during the dictatorship make it appropriate for evaluating these competing perspectives. Based on flexibility proponents’ predictions, we should expect increased formal sector employment over time, particularly among the least skilled Chilean workers, as well as reduced wage inequality. Yet, the rate of unemployment among least skilled workers in Chile remains essentially unchanged since the democratic transition as does income inequality. These conditions persist despite a high degree of labour market flexibility. Thus, Chile’s continued adherence to...

A demand on national economies in the 1970s was that they should begin to increase their labour market flexibility, which came to mean transferring risks and insecurity onto workers. Education was one way to prepare future workers for this new situation. The present article examines this preparation of learning for precarity some 40 years on. It is based on long-term ethnographic research in the Swedish upper-secondary school sector in particular kinds of educational programmes that have been devised and promoted as a means of integrating ‘lost pupils’ into either academic or vocational studies. The findings show this is not what is developing in practice in these programmes.

Labour market flexibility is an important issue in both development and labour economics. More flexibility in the labour market is believed to facilitate job creation, but also makes it easy for employers to terminate employment contracts and may be in conflict with the notion of decent jobs as promoted by the International Labour Organization and workers' unions. It is therefore not surprising that labour market flexibility or inflexibility has received a lot of attention in the extant literature. Using a sample of about 4700 firms from six African countries, we investigate the impact of restrictive labour regulation on a number of economic outcomes and find that more restrictive labour market regulations are detrimental to export propensity, export intensity, investment and employment. Policy-makers must be cautious, however, when implementing employment regulations as too flexible regulations may benefit employers at the expense of employees.

Dispatched workers refer to a newly legalised and fast-growing category of non-regular or atypical labour force in post-bubble Japan, who are involved in temporary agency work (TAW). TAW is distinguished from other traditional types of non-regular employment due largely to a triangular structure; while being typically employed by employment agencies, workers are dispatched to work at the facilities of and under the authority of client firms. Although remaining a fairly small percentage of the total workforce, dispatched workers have recently received considerable attention in political debate pertaining to two most noticeable by-products of neoliberalism: labour market flexibility and social divide or ‘widening gaps’ (kakusa). By examining closely the ongoing debate and drawing on anthropological approaches to discourse analysis, this article aims to show the wide implications of Japan's shifting employment landscape against the backdrop of globalisation, as well as power asymmetry and contestation inhere...

This study investigates the manner in which labour market flexibilisation is linked to the incorporation of Brazilian immigrants and their prospects for upward mobility in Japan. Although earlier studies have documented these relationships in North America and Europe, little is known about the socio-economic circumstances and recent changes in institutional settings in several Asian countries that currently accept a large number of immigrants. The results of this study indicate that the human and social capital of Brazilian immigrants has played a minor role in helping them to obtain standard employment. The highly regulated labour market in Japan has hindered the efforts of Brazilian immigrants to gain access to ‘good’ jobs with stable employment prospects, regardless of the degree of human and social capital that is possessed by individual immigrants. In addition, the recent increase in labour market flexibility has rendered it exponentially more difficult for Brazilian immigrants to enter the core empl...

Over the past decade, the World Bank has moved closer to accepting the International Labour Organization's (ILO's) core labour standards (CLS) and, in the process, sought to balance its promotion of labour market flexibility with a new focus on labour market regulation. The Bank's change of approach includes the 2009 decision to review and subsequently remove its labour market flexibility indicator (used to score the extent of labour market flexibility amongst its member-states) from its flagship publication, Doing Business. The aim of this article is to chart the softening of the Bank's emphasis on labour market flexibility and distil the contributing factors. With reference to the global financial crisis and the Bank's organizational characteristics, the article evaluates the work of international trade unions and the ILO as agenda-setters and compliance monitors and pro-labour industrialized states as ‘insider advocates’ in broadening the Bank's commitment to the CLS. The article demonstrates t...

This study examines whether a more flexible labour market – defined here in terms of the strictness of labour regulations regarding the flexibility of employers to adjust levels of employment in response to changing economic conditions – helps to promote a higher level of fixed capital formation in an economy. Theory generates ambiguous predictions concerning the sign of the relationship between investment and the labour market regulation regarding hiring and firing workers, although a positive relationship may be expected. Using an index of labour market regulation compiled from surveys of business executives in 19 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies, an econometric analysis is carried out to examine the effects of labour market flexibility on the level of investment in the manufacturing sector. The findings support the proposition that freeing-up regulatory constraints on employers’ use of labour helps to create a more favourable environment for investment.

This article considers the modularisation of initial vocational training (including apprenticeships) as a modernisation strategy in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Training systems are similarly structured in these three countries with the apprenticeship system at their heart, and the three national philosophies of education and training are largely comparable. The approach in each country will be outlined and the three will then be compared in terms of the background to modularisation, key drivers and decision-making procedures, and forms and intensity of modularisation. The article concludes that in all three countries, technical and organisational change and greater labour market flexibility are driving the pressure to modularise. While the educational policy players and modalities differ, all three countries have adopted a form of modularisation that is limited in terms of its scope and how radical it is. The article proposes a concept that enables training to be modularised while leaving intact a c...

Recent policy in England has advocated the introduction of fast-track degrees to provide an alternative, shorter route to a bachelor’s degree. It has been argued that this will widen participation in higher education and increase labour market flexibility by providing an option in which undergraduates spend one fewer years out of the labour market. Critics have suggested that the outcomes from this new undergraduate option will be worse than those for students following the standard length of undergraduate degree (which is three years for most subjects studied at universities in England). This criticism is based on a belief that students on the shorter degrees will be encouraged to ‘cram’, having less opportunity for reflection that will foster a deep understanding. These arguments are evaluated using data which compare students following two and three year degrees in the same subjects at the same university.

Ten years after its introduction, the Euro is in an existential crisis. The crisis is the outcome of economic policies that have aimed at labour market flexibility and financial integration. This paper argues, firstly, that the aggregate demand regime in the Euro area is wage led. While an increase in wages (other things equal) does have a negative effect on investment and on net exports, it does have a positive effect on consumption. As the Euro area is a relatively closed economy, the consumption effect overpowers the investment effect and the export effect. Secondly, we argue that in the Euro area two growth models have emerged: a credit-led and an export-led model. These have given rise to the imbalances that are at the heart of the Euro crisis. Wage flexibility has proven insufficient to prevent these imbalances. Thirdly, we advocate a system of coordinated wage bargaining that aims at wages rising in line with productivity growth and a substantially upward-revised inflation target. If the project of European economic integration is to survive, it needs a drastic change in direction. An important building block of this redirection is a rethinking of the role of wage policy.

In the last two decades a broad process of labour market reforms towards more flexible and liberal models has been taking place in Europe. For Central and Eastern European countries this evolution was an important dimension of the wider process of institutional change which accompanied their transition to market economies. This article presents the complex picture of EU countries at the outset of the recent crisis (2007) in terms of the components of earnings differentials, with particular emphasis on the dimensions of labour market flexibility identifiable with contractual arrangements (temporary versus permanent employment) and self-employment. Our main focus is on Central and Eastern European countries but we keep old EU members as benchmarks. Results highlight that different factors lie behind permanent/temporary and permanent/self-employed earnings gaps in the two regions. The dualism between regular and flexible jobs in the CEE labour market is mainly based on workers' attributes; in the Western EU ...

This paper explains the neo-liberal reform measures – foreign direct investment (FDI) policies, financialisation and labour market reform – of the Korean economy following the 1998 economic crisis. It investigates how they have influenced a process identified as the bipolarisation of Korea. Although the increase in FDI inflows has contributed to the economy by overcoming balance of payments difficulties, it has led to increased income inequality. As a result of labour market reforms that targeted labour market flexibility, the number of non-regular/non-standard and part-time workers has increased significantly over the past decade. Labour market reform and financialisation aggravated the bipolarisation.

The 'flexicurity' strategy reached the top of the European Union's policy agenda in the mid-2000s. The strategy assumes an adult worker model family and aims to promote better, as well as more, jobs and to ensure that policies should further both flexibility in the labour market and security for workers. The article explores, first, the meaning of internal and external flexibility, and of employment-based security and the different implications for men and women. While the policy documents assume that flexicurity will increase gender equality, the mechanisms have not been specified. In fact, as the article shows, women are often more 'flexible' workers than men, particularly regarding their contractual arrangements and hours of employment. However, they tend not to be economically autonomous and, we argue, the supply-side policies advocated on the security side of the flexicurity matrix are insufficient to improve their position, which is strongly related to the gendered divisions of paid and unpaid work.

The role of the temporary employment industry as an active intermediary in the job market can only be fully understood in the context of wider processes of restructuring and regulation at a particular time and place. In Namibia, the rise of poorly regulated employment relationships occurred in a context of expanding institutional and statutory regulation of the labour market. Here the temporary employment industry thrives within the interstices left by the limits in regulatory coverage. Nonstandard jobs are premised on a selective decoupling of the employment relationship from statutory, and hence almost invariably also collective, protective measures. The mediating role of the employment agency between the client firm and the temporary labourer allows management to evade or dilute the protections that insulate permanent employees from competitive pressures in the external market. As such, temporary agency employment constitutes both a regulatory ‘fix’ for the dilemmas associated with the deploym...

Drawing from various literatures, this article explores links between equity markets and labour market flexibility. Various data sources are used to test relationships for a set of OECD countries, controlling for other likely influences on flexibility such as government and industrial relations institutions. The results are generally supportive as regards employment flexibility: equity market trading activity is associated with shorter job tenure, higher activity rates, and greater employment change over the cycle. However, the relationship between equity markets and pay flexibility is less statistically robust to the addition of controls.

We examine the impact of government policy on the incidence of temporary work by analysing the case of British Columbia (BC), Canada. The analysis is based upon the Canadian Labour Force Survey 1997–2004; temporary work is defined as work that is not expected to last for more than 6 months and includes seasonal, fixed‐term, casual, and temporary help agency work. A case study of BC provides a valuable opportunity to assess the impacts of neoliberal government policy, designed to increase labour market flexibility, on the extent of temporary work because we are able to compare labour market trends in BC both before and after the reforms introduced in 2001 and to compare BC with other provinces in Canada that were not subject to such large changes in their policy environments. We find that the shift to neoliberal policies in BC led to significant increases in the likelihood of workers finding themselves in temporary employment. We also find that the likelihood of being a temporary worker in BC in the post‐p...

In historical studies of the labour market, one of the most extensively debated subjects has been unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930s. According to a new panel data, the unemployment rate among construction workers in Helsinki was 45% in spite of extensive relief work. At the same time, real hourly wages dropped 25–35% and piecework rates 40–60%, which was an even more exceptional phenomenon. The main reasons for these phenomena were difficulties in financing construction work, the weakness of the trade union and the lack of unemployment benefits.

High commitment or high performance work systems (HPWS) are a managerial approach aimed at facilitating high performance companies by transforming employees from merely being workers into partners with employers in realizing company goals. To achieve this HPWS use human resource practices that draw on employee commitment, involvement and empowerment. The pursuit of HPWS with employees in export-oriented industries (EOI) in newly industrializing economies (NIEs) of Malaysia and Sri Lanka is explored here. The discussion confirms a number of difficulties in realizing the aims of an HPWS approach because employers simultaneously pursue labour market flexibility (LMF) practices. As a result, this hybrid labour management model fractures workers' commitment thus leading to a mismatch between the ‘talk’ and ‘walk’ of HPWS in these environments with significant implications for employers.

This paper looks into the challenges that further economic integration in the European Union (EU) poses upon the member states. The continuing adjustment and integration of the individual economies of the EU does not focus as much on ironing out structural differences as on issues of economic policy fine-tuning. The argument suggests that by harmonizing their economic goals with those of the EU, member states are likely to expedite reaching national economic objectives as well as achieve the EU's supra-national economic goals. The paradigm of Greece is discussed and a policy analysis vis-a`-vis competitiveness, technology and innovation, productivity, learning and knowledge, and labour market flexibility is attempted. In the following sections an effort is made to examine the not-so-visible effects of the EU's supra-national economic policy and discuss its impact upon Greece's national economic policy. Policy prescriptions relevant to economic policy formulation are argued. Those prescriptions re...

A philosophy of deregulation of social and labour law was adopted during the late 1970s and early 1980s as a response to increased pressures of global competition on the EEC.1 Flexibility in employment was highly advocated in the United Kingdom with the neo-liberal regime by the Conservative government under Thatcher. This position reflected a neo-liberal ideological commitment to labour market flexibility. This philosophy of protecting employers (particularly small enterprises) from burdensome regulations found allies in other EEC member states.2 The persistence of an employment crisis led to the development of modalities of flexibility and reorganization of working time. Flexibility was viewed as a means of increasing employment and it was identified as an important part of the EU employment strategy. Council Resolutions of Employment Guidelines provided for the Social Partners (management and labour) to be invited to negotiate agreements 'to modernize the organization of work, including flexible working arrangements, with the aim of making undertakings productive and competitive and achieving the required balance between flexibility and security' and so that 'women were able to benefit positively from flexible forms of work organization'. Flexible organization of work in a way which fulfils both the wishes of social partners and competition requirements resulted in time not only in employment promotion but also in reinforcement of the significance of the principle of equal opportunities for men and women. Greater flexibility in working time considerably increased the number of women in general, and married women with children in particular, in industrialized countries. The quest for sex equality has been the central and most highly developed issue of the EC's social policy. Women predominantly carry the burden of having to reconcile family and professional life, and statistics clearly show that working women are congregated in flexible, atypical, and deregulated forms of work. Flexible and atypical work models had to be regulated taking into consideration the issue of indirect discrimination3 as regards sex, and the development of atypical types of work facilitated women's penetration into the workforce. But, whether atypical employment decreased gender-based segregation is another important issue of concern. Seeking atypical employment may be a necessity rather than a choice for women.

The current article presents the concept of labour market flexibility and its role in transition economies. The role of unions in labour market flexibility is described in order to assess the role of unions in Estonia. We assume that the wage differential reflects the power of trade unions to shape the working conditions in the workplace. Therefore the most common approach is followed for estimating the wage differential i.e. analysing personal, occupation and industry characteristics. It appears that Estonian trade unions do not have enough bargaining power to result in a positive wage gap for union members. This result was expected because trade union density and coverage rates are very low in Estonia.

In this paper we examine the impact of temporary work on two dimensions of social inequality: income and career mobility. Additionally, we are taking a comparative perspective on this subject by comparing Germany and the UK. To investigate the effects of temporary work we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Study on non-self-employed respondents. The results show that temporary work does influence the system of social inequality: we found wage penalties and an increased probability of severe negative effects on the working careers of temporarily employed persons in both countries (net of education, age, and a variety of other covariates). Thus we can conclude that temporary employment represents a substantial socio-economic risk for employees. Most importantly, this holds true for both the German and the British case, two quite distinct labour market regimes.

This article presents a comparison of worker flows in all three Baltic labour markets before and after the 1998 Russian crisis. Our evidence helps us to understand the micro impacts of macroeconomic shocks in the late‐transition countries and sheds light on labour market flexibility in the Baltic states. While there has been much research on the labour markets of transition economies, including Estonia, the other two Baltic economies have been largely left out so far. In spite of the common assumption viewing the three Baltic countries as one homogeneous group, we find the Russian crisis had dramatically different effects across the three labour markets. As a result of the crisis, the Estonian outflow from unemployment declined and the unemployment pool became more stagnant. In contrast, in Latvia the unemployment outflow remained relatively high, but there was an increase in the inflow to inactivity. One explanation for this situation in Latvia, where unemployment has been substantially higher than in Es...

B ENNER C. (2003) Labour flexibility and regional development: the role of labour market intermediaries, Reg. Studies 37 , 621-633. As contemporary labour markets have become more complex, volatile and unpredictable, labour market intermediaries (LMIs) have played an increasingly prominent role in shaping labour flexibility and regional development. Existing theories of regional development, however, do not adequately account for this prominent role. Using Silicon Valley as a case study, this paper contributes to developing a theory of intermediaries and regional development by highlighting the role LMIs play in three important labour market functions - reducing transactions costs, building networks and managing risk. In doing this, intermediaries play a critical role in shaping the speed and character of labour market adjustment, thus contributing directly to regional development, with significant implications for regional development policy. B ENNER C. (2003) La flexibilite du travail et l'ame nagement ...

If income support for a period of parental leave is viewed as societal recognition of parents' lost income from employment in order to care for children, then there is some justification for linking eligibility for payment to a parent's eligibility for job protection. This argument is substantially undermined, however, when a significant number of parents, often through no fault of their own, find themselves in jobs that are not covered by job protection legislation. Drawing on the situations in New Zealand and the USA, it is argued that at a time when employers and governments are seeking greater labour market flexibility, linking payment to eligibility for job protection increases the potential for many workers to be excluded from qualifying for paid parental leave. From a public health perspective, the most effective health protection policies are those that achieve the widest coverage. From this vantage point, the ability to take a period of parental leave should not relate to an individual's labour m...

This paper examines the effect of labour strategies and management types on firm performance in Chinese enterprises. We use two large panel surveys on Chinese enterprises, spanning almost two decades of transition. Our findings suggest that, as commonly thought, there are significant differences across ownership types in China in the degree to which flexible labour market strategies are utilized; and more flexible strategies (such as bonus-reward systems) do seem to significantly enhance performance. However, after controlling for different degrees of labour market flexibility, ownership differences have little influence on enterprise performance (with the exception that foreign joint ventures clearly outperform other types in growth and labour productivity). This important result suggests that the impact of Chinese ownership types on performance is felt through cost-impacts rather than via direct differences in competitive behaviour or the goals of enterprise decision-makers.

This paper examines the implications of increased labour market flexibility in the form of part-time work for the 'Scottish public finances' in the context of devolution and the establishment of a Scottish Parliament with tax varying powers. The labour market/public finance implications of increased flexibility are discussed. The Scottish situation is then analysed using an integrated spreadsheet model which calculates the net contributions (taxes minus benefits) of different household types. The findings show that a substitution of part-time for full-time jobs has the potential to seriously erode households' net contributions and so exacerbate the existing structural deficit in the Scottish public finances. Dans le contexte de la regionalisation et de l'etablissement d'un Parlement ecossais dote des pouvoirs quant a la modulation des impots, cet article cherche a examiner les retombees sur les finances publiques ecossaises de la souplesse accrue du marchedu travail sous forme du travail ¤ atemps partiel....

This paper argues that the notion of labour market flexibility represents an inadequate framework for understanding the challenges faced by a democratic Indonesia in the post-crisis period. Such challenges entail the need to nourish employment-intensive recovery, developing a credible and cordial industrial relations system and empowering workers to cope with the problems of vulnerability and risk that are inherent in any globally-oriented market economy. The uncritical embrace of labour market flexibility in the pre-crisis period overlooked some inherent problems, such as the failure to develop a coherent industrial relations system. Although labour market flexibility helped prevent a sharp rise in unemployment during the economic crisis, the plummeting of real wages strengthens the case for government interventions in dealing with adverse labour market outcomes.

Subcontracting has been an important feature of British industrial development. External (inter-firm) subcontracting, common in the building trades, transport and engineering, has been represented as an alternative to large-scale direct management. Meanwhile internal subcontracting to skilled artisans has historically constituted an important alternative to wage labour in a wide range of industries such as clothing and textiles, coal mining and quarrying, iron and steel, engineering and the metal goods trades. Understanding this form of subcontracting is central to explanations of changes in the labour process, industrial relations and gender divisions of labour in these sectors. A considerable literature stretching from the nineteenth century has questioned the possible exploitative consequences of such contractual arrangements. While both forms of subcontracting declined from the late nineteenth century, as firms sought to internalize production and management, external subcontracting continued to be important in several sectors such as construction, transport and some engineering-related trades. It is in these industries that subcontracting established its recognizable modern form, with medium and large businesses delegating tasks to smaller firms or individuals. The last two decades have witnessed a renaissance of subcontracting, in the context of corporate moves towards reducing costs by fostering greater labour market flexibility’. The British road haulage industry was transformed between the wars from a primarily short distance service to a major competitor to the railways, due to technological developments and measures that reduced the immediate cost of vehicle acquisition. As an essentially ‘new’ industry in which subcontracting became a key feature, it provides an excellent illustration of the development of subcontracting relations. The industry’s growth was facilitated by freight clearing houses which subcontracted haulage to individual vehicle owners. These intermediaries were crucial in negating barriers to entry in the haulage trade, by arranging hire purchase (HP) for vehicle purchases and co-ordinating payloads. Such inducements attracted considerable numbers of subcontractors into the sector. While recognizing these potential advantages, virtually all commentators on the industry have stressed the highly exploitative effects of its subcontracting relations. The industry’s trade journal The Commercial Motor frequently highlighted abuses, arguing that while ‘responsible’ clearing houses existed, they were in a minority. Most were said to exploit their powerful position over hauliers, especially those drivers who became tied to their services, driving down their rates with ‘a wonderful compound of cynicism and pretended helplessness’. Contemporary and historical academic analysis of road haulage during this period has generally offered a similar verdict without examining subcontracting in any great detail. This article re-examines this conclusion by explicitly focusing upon the relations between clearing houses and hauliers. It uses the framework of transactions cost analysis to explain how clearing houses were able to push down subcontractors’ rates by exploiting privileged information, while using HP arrangements and other contractual obligations to monopolize the subcontractors’ services. Such practices generated persistently low incomes for hauliers, who found it necessary to work excessively long hours in an attempt to stave off business failure. These problems were exacerbated by overcapacity within the sector, which can be partly attributed to the reduced barriers to entry arising from clearing house incentives. In addition, some clearing houses capitalized upon the potential for opportunism provided by contemporary HP contract law, engineering subcontractor default on HP payments to regain possession of vehicles. The article begins by outlining the emergence and form of subcontracting in road haulage. It then discusses the nature and impact of opportunism in the sector, explaining why independent hauliers enjoyed limited earning opportunities outside their dealings with the clearing houses, the significance of their contractual obligations and the role played by HP commitments. The analysis also considers why exploitative subcontracting relations were able to persist for many years, despite being widely recognized by well-informed observers. In conclusion the article briefly comments on the wider relevance of opportunism for the analysis of subcontracting in other sectors.

In recent years the use of outsourcing in Australia has increased in both the public and private sectors. This article examines the reasons, effects and implications associated with the outsourcing decision. The literature explores the reasons for outsourcing that range from those based on costs to those based on competitive advantage, labour market flexibility and self-interest of decision makers. The relevant literature also highlights the controversy surrounding the effects of outsourcing. The discussion also examines outsourcing's effect on industrial relations and human resource areas, such as labour market flexibility, morale, turnover, absenteeism and safety, as well as the measurement of contract performance, management control and accountability issues. It argues that human resource implications must be examined in addition to those based on economic criteria and that systems, which measure the effects of outsourcing against objectives, need to be introduced. The paper concludes that fur...

This article examines the implications of increased labour market flexibility, in the form of part-time work, for the Scottish public finances in the context of devolution and the establishment of a Scottish Parliament with income tax-varying powers. The income tax contributions of different Scottish household types are calculated using a spreadsheet-based model. The findings show that any trend towards part-time, rather than full-time, employment could seriously erode the country's total income tax take and reduce the effectiveness of the tax-varying powers to provide a source of additional revenue for the Scottish Parliament.

Economists' contest on labour market flexibility has quickly pivoted around the stylised trade off between more flexibility and growth on the one hand and increased inequality of income on the other, the welfare implications of this trade off being too often assumed rather than verified. This article uses the essays collected in the Special Issue on Labour Markets and Flexibility in the 1990s of the International Review of Applied Economics to challenge the terms of this trade off as well as the related welfare assumptions. Some of the most popular tenets in the literature are assessed in the light of the evidence and the arguments put forward by the authors contributing to the Special Issue, in particular, the notion that the European labour market is rigid, the contention that more flexibility is imposed by international competition, or that labour market regulation weakens both employment and output growth, the belief that the main welfare cost of flexibility is increased inequality of earnings or the ...

IN TIIIS ARTICLE WE EXPLORE the changing character of internal mobility in Russian industrial enterprises over the period of reform. First we discuss the dualistic character of the Soviet labour market, review the evidence for the rigidity of the internal labour market and report survey data that indicate a significant increase in internal mobility in the period of reform. Next we review qualitative data, based on work history interviews, to characterise the changing forms of internal mobility from the perspective of employees. Then we review the same phenomena as aspects of managers' employment strategies. The article concludes that increased employment insecurity has reinforced rather than reduced the dualism of the Russian labour market, but that there has been a significant growth of multi-skilling and multi-tasking as line managers try to preserve the core of the labour collective in the face of financial and employment constraints and as workers seek to protect themselves from redundancy by acquiring a range of skills. The cost of this increase in flexibility is an intensification of labour, a degree of de-skilling, and the 'closure' of the labour market. Dual labour markets in the Soviet system of production The ideal in the Soviet period was for the worker to find a suitable workplace and then to remain in the same enterprise or organisation for his or her entire working life. This was an ideal for the party-state, since the enterprise was the core social institution and the primary locus of social integration and social control. It was the ideal for enterprise management, because it encouraged the formation of a socially integrated labour force and the development of job-specific and enterprise-specific skills, while seniority, and the benefits associated with it, provided an essential lever of informal managerial control. But it was also an ideal for the worker, for many of whom the workplace was their second home and their workmates a second family. Although this ideal was not fully realised, and the regime indulged in frequent breast-beating about the problems of high levels of labour turnover, in fact by the 1980s labour turnover in the Soviet Union was not excessive, and was heavily concentrated among young people, who would wander around in search of a suitable opening, and unskilled workers and workers in low-paid low-prestige industries, who would be constantly on the look-out for something better. The norm of stability was reinforced by a number of quite substantial incentives to

This paper develops a cultural explanation for labour-market flexibility, building on the work of Lipset. Using Hofstede's conceptual framework for categorizing national cultures, certain hypotheses are derived concerning the association of various labour-market institutions and rigidities connected with employment, pay bargaining the treatment of the unemployed, and Hofstede's dimensions of national culture. These hypotheses are tested on data for OECD countries, using ordinary least squares regression. The results demonstrate a strong statistical association between Hofstede's cultural indices and the various labour-market rigidities. In particular, there is a strong inverse relationship between Hofstede's MAS variable and all our labour flexibility variables. Cultural values reflecting feminine gender structuring appear to be strongly associated with labour-market inflexibility. There is also a strong statistical association between scores on the UAI dimension, and employment rigidities and pay-bargain...

The human resource management literature has covered the issues relating to labour market flexibility (LMF), and highlighted a trend in many sectors towards increasing reliance on peripheral workers. Construction has been cited as a model in terms of its ability to exploit the benefits of LMF in its widespread use of peripheral workers as a response to an uncertain operating environment. This paper examines employers' quests for LMF in the construction industry in Singapore, explores the prevailing approaches to labour use in the industry, considers the rationales for the reliance on peripheral workers, and evaluates the merits and disadvantages of this practice. It argues that Singapore's construction firms have always relied on a traditional form of employment based on a labour subcontracting system, but recent years have witnessed changes in the structure of the system as well as an increase in the proportion of foreign workers in the labour force. In addition, it is argued that the conditions for the ...

Recent financial crisis has raised questions about the underpinnings and longevity of economic success in Asia, and has reminded us to be sceptical of pundits and the eponymous populist predictions relating to the region. Several perspectives can guide the analysis and evaluation of industrialization, from ‘state’ versus ‘market’, ‘internal’ versus ‘external’, and ‘macro’ versus ‘micro’. Companies in Korea as ‘latecomers’ have pursued ‘catch-up’ strategies. However, Korean corporate capabilities reside in a restricted number of industries, firms and functions (production), and are poor elsewhere, such as in marketing, technology (design and development) and organization, and small and medium-sized enterprises. Furthermore, many factors regarded once as sources of Korea's success are now seen as weaknesses. The future challenges facing Korea include its dirigiste economy, organizational structures and governance, financial transparency and labour market flexibility. While there are undoubted problems, its ...

This article addresses several issues surrounding the politics of flexibility in Spain. First, it argues that the strategic role of trade unions develop and condition public policies on labour market reform by couching their strategies in terms of the post‐war labour market strategies and structures of the state, especially as governments attempt to move away from established forms of fordist regulation. Hence, second, a broader political and historical perspective is required that understands the complex political dynamics of state‐labour relationships and their structuring over time. The state's role and its labour market presence becomes itself the object of distinct political interventions and calculations by unions, governments and employers. Any discussion of a ‘post‐fordist’ state, determined to increase the flexibility of the labour market, must look at the complex and difficult ‘transitional’ process.

This article surveys the emergence of arguments about the increasing significance of labour market flexibility in Australia. It develops a critique, which suggests that the call for greater labour ...

In a recent contribution to this journal, Manning (2000: 106) offers an analy tical framework that, he argues , enables him to demonstrate why ‘unemployment and the incidence of poverty did not rise more than they did during the (Indonesian) crisis’. The crux of his discussion rests on the notion of labour market flexibility. In enunciating his propositions, the author makes some references to a study conducted by the ILO (International Labour Organization) and financed by the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) (ILO/UNDP 1998) that run the risk of misrepresenting one of its key conclusions. This comment makes two points. First, the author needs to be careful in the way he depicts the work of the ILO. Second, the analytical construct of labour market flexibility helps to explain why unemployment did not go up sharply during the crisis, but is perhaps too stylised in one respect. It does not enable one to appreciate fully an important feature of the Indonesian crisis, namely, the volatility of consumption poverty (that is, poverty defined in terms of current expenditure) in the short run.

Like the ubiquitous prefix "post," "flexibility" has become a common buzzword of the 1980s in a wide variety of academic writing. The two are in fact often connected, for the essence of this "post" period - whether postmodern, post-fordist, or post-industrial - is said to be flexibility - flexible specialization, flexible accumulation,' flexible firm, labour market flexibility, the "Age of Flexibility." Essentially, the debate surrounding post-fordism flexibility has to do with the way firms, industries and indeed national economies and world capitalism are restructuring in this era of technological change, heightened international competition and rapidly changing markets.

This article explores the roots of industrial relations policy under the French Fifth Republic. Challenged by radical unions, employers and the right formulated a common consensus‐minded response. While refusing face‐to‐face bargaining with radical unions in the work‐place, employers negotiated a network of national agreements to secure social peace and consensus. If employers came to accept company bargaining and workplace expression under the Auroux Laws, it was because under depressive market conditions they were able to dominate the new institutions. Despite commitment to de‐regulation Chirac has preserved the laws and urged the co‐operation of unions and management to achieve greater labour market flexibility.

To resolve the high unemployment rates in many Western European countries, the notion of labour market flexibility has been gaining favour with academics and policy‐makers. This article examines the notion of labour market flexibility in detail and assesses the extent to which it has been implemented in West Germany, Britain and France. It is argued that the most significant developments towards flexibility have occurred in Britain because of the Thatcher government's commitment to neo‐liberal economic policies and because the ‘voluntarist’ British industrial relations system does not represent a barrier to the pursuit of such a policy. By contrast, there has been only a partial incorporation of flexibility initiatives within Germany and France largely because no government in either country has been committed to a full neo‐liberal assault in the existing dense array of national industrial relations institutions, norms and legislation. The article also assesses the extent to which labour market flexibilit...