Reclaiming the Concept of Flexibility

Abstract

There is something rotten about the concept of ‘flexibility’. It has for a long time been a key concept in the political working-life debate, as well as in research in this area. It has, for example, been stressed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as an essential part of a regenerated economic development, and it has underlain changes in EU labour law. And research on flexibility is immense. In March 2006, a search on Google Scholar gave 1,080,000 hits for ‘flexibility’ and 1,400,000 for ‘flexible’. But all is not well. The literature is not only abundant — it is also incongruous and confusing. The many meanings of the term make flexibility an excellent basis for forming ideological and value-laden discourses on the new working life. It is not uncommon to play on these paradoxes by formulating oxymorons, such as the title of Dore’s (1986) book Flexible Rigidities,or the chapter ‘Inflexible Flexibility’ (Elger and Fairbrother 1992).