ABSTRACT
This paper sets out to examine two theoretical concerns: first, it explores the issues raised in the debates on labour market flexibility; and, second, it analyses the extent to which this theory can be applied across national boundaries, on the basis of case-study evidence collected in the banking sector in Britain and France. Discussions on flexibility have received an incredible amount of attention in the European as well as the Anglophone literature on labour markets and organizational decision making in the 1980s. Proponents of the concept of flexibility often claim to have identified ‘new’ employer strategies, as well as offering a fresh perspective for conceptualizing the labour market and organizational practice. However, the concept of flexibility has been criticized for being poorly founded on empirical evidence, and for being no more than a revised version of previous debates in dual and segmented labour market theory. It is widely felt that some of these models are in need of reformulation because they inadequately describe current labour practices (Rubery, 1988; Lui, 1990; Gallie and White, 1991). The aim of this paper is to examine these debates, to analyse the underlying assumptions on which these major theories have been constructed and to present the evidence collected in this study. Finally, in assessing this evidence, it seeks to point out how a new model of labour market flexibility needs to be developed to include a wider set of explanations
Source: The International Journal of Human Resource Management (May 1992), 3(1):35-58.
