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Dismantling flexibility
Anna Pollert
Capital & Class 1988 12: 42
DOI: 10.1177/030981688803400107
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Anna Pollert
Dismantling flexibility
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Flexibility
organisation of work, and by asserting a sea-change of management strategy and employment structure, fuses description, prediction and prescription towards a self-fulfilling prophecy . A
deconstruction of 'flexibility' as an extremely powerful term which
legitimises an array of policy practices is long overdue .
Within management literature, 'flexibility' has been a handy
legitimatry tool precisely because of its all-purpose resistance to
precise definition . Production flexibility, technical flexibility,
organisational flexibility, labour process flexibility, time, wage,
financial, marketing flexibility - all these issues are presumed to
have a connection, and this connection is implicitly understood
to reside in the behaviour of labour . Such a slippage has allowed
the discussion of restructuring to veer away from the global issues
of capital structure, investment, exchange rates, trade relations,
to the homely, and apparently more manageable 'problem' of
labour . The argument runs that the changeability of markets is
the supreme challenge facing management, and its solution lies
in the flexibility of adaptability of labour, both in the workplace,
and in the labour market . Other dimensions of production, such
as organisation and design, in which labour costs are not a prime
issue, and other managerial driving forces, such as marketing,
are swept off the table (Rubery et al, 1987) . Such an ideological
assumption is far from new ; it accompanied the concern with the
British worker's 'productivity' some twenty-odd years ago :
. . . it had always been there, a sort of background music
full of familiar melodies . . . it had always been accompanied
by a more or less constant refrain - something about British
workers and productivity . (Nichols, 1986 : xi)
On a wider level, the whole 'flexibility' ethos is notable for
its futurological discourse . With the growth of insecure, or irregular forms of work, and unemployment, social scientists have
'discovered' what casual wage labourers and those outside paid
employment - very largely women and youth - already knew,
that not all 'work' is stable and secure. Libertarian futurologists
have heralded work in the small business, self-employed, informal
and domestic economy as a 'new' form of work, not only more
competitive (because more 'flexible' in adjusting to markets), but
offering autonomy, 'flexible' hours, and in general 'flexible
working lives' . A body of futurological writing based on a postindustrial conception of a 'radical break' in 'industrial society'
and a largely technically determinist prophecy of the 'collapse of
work' and 'discovery of leisure' (Jenkins & Sherman, 1979) has
meshed with a dualist construction of the economy . In essence, a
demise of regular wage labour, indeed, of wage labour itself, is
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given a libertarian
legitimation,
because
it School
is both
inevitable
43
44
progressive.
The left-reformist writing on 'flexibility', most notably articulated by Piore and Sabel (1984), explicitly distances itself from
the concern with labour market flexibility (Piore, 1986a). It is
also on quite a different intellectual level of theorisation from the
management and 'manpower studies' literature (e .g. Handy,
1984 ; Atkinson, 1984). Nevertheless, the panacea of 'flexible
specialisation' (FS) indicates an overwhelming consensus between
left and right on the sovereignty of markets as the defining
principle of restructuring . For the neo-classical revivalists and
their management practitioners, this is obviously the strategy for
capital . For the FS school, the restructuring of capital by the
restructuring of production and labour, is once again the route
forward, only this time, as a reform for capital and labour . The
convergence between the right and Fs dissemination of 'flexibility'
is a central theme of deconstruction in the following analysis .
There are further conceptual affinities between the reformist
FS perspective and the managerial literature, stemming from the
prime place given to markets . This is the elevation of the fragmentation and decentralisation of production, and of the small
firms sector, as the economic saviours of an ailing system . Behind
this resurrection of economic dualism in both approaches, is the
'post-industrial' vision of a radical historical cleavage and branching point in social development, the projection of trends and a
'grand theory' futurology of technical and productive paths,
from'Fordism' to'neo-Fordism' .
Before a detailed examination of these two 'flexibility' literatures and their relationship, two areas of mystification implicit in
both need clarifying . First are the dimensions of labour flexibility
under discussion, and second, the assumption that these are new
concerns .
Flexibility in employment and in work - what's new?
Flexibility
economic regeneration . Of state employment deregulation policies, the clearest statement of the virtues of labour market flexibility is the 1985 White Paper, Employment, the challenge for the
Nation, a document which was deliberately modelled as the
antithesis of the 1944 White Paper on employment, which embodied the post-war consensual commitment to full employment
(Standing, 1986 : 45) .
Linked to the concern with labour market flexibility, the
implicit focus on the flexibility or rigidity of labour within work,
perpetuates the concern with flexibility manifest in British productivity dealing in the 1960s and 1970s, albeit with a crucial
shift in bargaining power away from labour . A typical productivity
deal in the 1960s concerned `Increased flexibility in the use of
manpower . . . [and] changes in working practices, e .g . tighter
scheduling of transport operations, shift work changes and flexibility over numbers and types of machines supervised' (NBPt,
123, 1%9 :4) . ,
Concern with both forms of flexibility is not new . It is the
flexibility of human labour which creates the elastic commodity
of labour power and allows its extension and intensification in the
extraction of surplus value . Capital has always required flexibility
of labour ; the struggle over its control has structured management
development, the capitalist tabour process, and forms of labour
organisation .
In the early days of industrial capitalism, the emphasis was
on defining rules and demarcations, both in time and task . The
tension between the discipline of wage tabour and the rhythms of
life outside this social relation has been a source of conflict
throughout the development of capitalism . E P Thompson charts
the harnessing to time discipline through the 18th and 19th
centuries, when the employers, far from wanting flexibility,
imposed rigidity on the `irregularity of the working day and week
. . . framed until the first decades of the 19th century, within the
larger irregularity of the working year, punctuated by traditional
holidays and fairs. Eventually, the rigid wall between work and
non-work was built' :
The first generation of factory workers were taught by their
masters the importance of time;. the second . . . formed
their short time committees . . . the third struck for overtime
or time-and-a-half. They had accepted the categories of
their employers and learned to fight back within them . They
had learned their lesson, that time is money, only too well .
(Thompson,1%3 : 76, 86) .
The debate from this period about the benefits and costs of
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regular employment,
organised
or `flexible'
labour
markets,
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Flexibility
Flexibility and dualism : the 'flexible firm' and 'flexible
specialisation'
The 'flexible firm' model asserts there is an 'emerging manpower system within the large primary sector firm ; a 'new'
polarisation between a 'core' and a 'periphery' workforce, the
one with functional and the other with numerical flexibility, to
provide adaptability to changing product markets (Atkinson,
1984, 1985a, 1985b). The multi-skilled 'core' group offers'functional' flexibility in the labour process, by crossing occupational
boundaries. It also offers flexibility by time, in terms of adjusting
more closely to production demands . The 'periphery' provides
'numerical flexibility' ; workers may be insecurely or irregularly
employed, or not have a direct relationship with the firm at all,
being, for example, sub-contracted or self-employed . Here, it is
the precariousness of the employment relationship and competitiveness of the labour market which provides the employer with a
numerically variable workforce .
The economic and social basis of the privileged sector is
allegedly its importance to the 'organisation's key, f irm-specific
activities' (Atkinson, 1984a) ; thus, the model rests on the assumption of a direct relationship between primary employment conditions and the business concept of managerial 'strategic choice' of
an organisation's 'core activity' . The 'peripheral' workers, by
contrast, are less central (i.e. they are important, but not part of
the 'core business'),
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the open labour market, and therefore less protected from its
competitive pressure. It is their disposability which matters :
`numerical flexibility is sought so that headcount can be quickly
and easily increased or decreased in line with even short-term
changes in the level of demand for labour' (Atkinson,1984).
The appeal, but also the weakness, of this model is both its
comprehensiveness, in covering a wide Slumber of employment
situations in one model, and its simplicity . In a later reference to
the model, Atkinson and Meager (NEDO, 1986) describe it as a
tool with which to analyse a wide variety of changes in employment practice, rather than as a description of any real firm . There
are others who share the view that the model is a rough and ready
guide to understanding key changes in employment (e.g . Hakim,
1987 : 93), and this is reflected in the wide currency of common
usage of the terms 'core' and `periphery', and of the two kinds of
flexibility . Although Atkinson registers the insecurity of the
secondary sector labour force, its deliberate expansion is nevertheless seen as either inevitable, or desirable from capital's point
of view, and it is up to labour to make the best of this .
The `flexible firm' was widely reported in the press (e .g .
Guardian, 18 April 1984; Industrial Relations Review and Report,
7 August 1984; Personnel Management, August 1984 ; New Society,
30 August 1985), and 'core' and 'periphery' are common parlance
in management conferences (e .g. IRS, 1985, 1986) and academic
language. It has also entered trade union debate ; its incursion
into bargaining language has made 'functional' and 'numerical'
flexibility common currency, and has forced a critical response
from the labour movement (Tuc, 1985 ; LRD, 1986). But besides
evoking some critical commentary on the left, it has also frequently
been incorporated as evidence of a 'new' management strategy in
radical texts (cArrs, 1986 ; Mitter, 1986; Nichols, 1986 ; Potter,
1987) . To the extent that it is fact or has become a material force
as practice, this inclusion is justified . Yet this is far from proven,
and its reportage as a 'fait-accompli' hardly clarifies the matter . It
is therefore long overdue that the model, its factual evidence,
its conceptual base, its policy implications are put to rigorous
scrutiny .
Flexible specialisation: an outline
Flexibility
49
Flexibility
breath of new technology and new markets . Both positions depend
ultimately on a market perspective, and so, not surprisingly,
converge with the neo-classical revival which sets the political
agenda of the day .
We begin, then, with an empirical evaluation both of the
`flexible firm' model and the FS analysis, as the precursor to
unravelling the common threads running through both literatures .
If the `flexible firm' is indeed the 'new' trend in employment The `flexible firm'
structure, it should be possible to show evidence both for an
expanding 'periphery', and for a consolidating 'core' (Pollert,
1987) . On existing evidence, there is little support for either .
The evidence for a growing 'periphery'
The 'core'-'periphery' dichotomy has been picked up and
broadcast by some observers as a way to emphasise the importance of casual employment in the economy . Hakim has
argued that, 'By the mid-1980s the labour force divided neatly
into two-thirds "permanent" and one-third "flexible" . . . the
importance of the "flexible" sector has clearly been underestimated ; it is hardly a narrow and insignificant fringe on the
edge of the labour market' (Hakim, 1987 : 93) . Unfortunately,
this conceptualisation has always been a muddy conflation of
legally disadvantaged, but long-term work, such as part-time
work, and temporary work, so that, from the start, 'numerical
flexibility' has added to a confused understanding of employment .
This has been further complicated by the ahistorical 'discovery'
of insecurity, as though it were radically new, and the calling of
this a 'flexibility' trend .
The influential NEDO report, 'Changing Working Patterns', .
for example, claims that 'nine out of every 10 respondents had
introduced changes to manning practices since 1980 designed to
increase numerical flexibility' (NEDO, 1986 : 6). However, the
conclusion of 'radical change' is undermined by the conflation of
standard practices to vary production with changes in employment . Besides part-time work, the inclusion of overtime working
in 'numerical flexibility' confuses a traditional practice for permanent employees with varying the numbers of workers .
But if 'peripheral' work is taken to mean 'non-standard'
contractual status, deviating from a full-time 'norm', there is
little evidence that there has been a recent increase .
Temporary work. Hakim (1987) originally claimed, on the
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basis of the 1985
Labour
Force Survey,
that
'the
most &dramatic
51
52
Flexibility
ployment obscures the fact that it declined from 7 .6 to 6.7 per cent
of the manufacturing workforce. For women, this was a 40 per
cent loss in manufacturing part-time jobs between 1979 and 1986
(Lewis, 1987). The 1984 Census of Employment and 1985 Labour
Force Survey cast further doubt on a simplistic view of increasing
part-time work . At an aggregate level, the proportion of the total
workforce who worked part-time (defined here as working fewer
than 30 hours per week) increased only from 14 per cent to 16 per
cent between 1980 and 1984 . As previously, it remains concentrated in the non-manufacturing sector, where it has increased
from 18 per cent to 22 per cent of the workforce between 1980
and 1984 (Millward & Stevens, 1986 : 205). For women, parttime work rose only from 40 per cent to 42 per cent of all women
workers in the service sector between 1979 and 1984, and somewhat surprisingly, in retail it increased only from 34 per cent to
36 per cent of female employees . This could mask huge differences, by firm size, for example . It could also miss increases in
the number of women earning below the National Insurance
threshold . But it may well be that there are contradictory processes
of growth and decline, as well as, what may be more qualitatively
significant, changes in the type of part-time work (hours, length
and regularity of shifts), rather than a dramatic increase .
Finally, turning to the public sector, we find once more that
it is highly relevant : 'Two fifths of the manual workforce in the
public services sector consisted of part-time workers in 1984,
compared with just over a quarter in the private services sector'
(Millward & Stevens, 1986 : 207) . And its main growth between
1980 and 1984 appears to be 'amongst the largest workplaces in
the public services sector' (ibid : 209) . These findings demonstrate
that the 'flexible firm' conflates changes in the public sector, and the
services in general, with management strategy in the private sector .
Outworking, freelancing and homeworking . This is a notoriously difficult area to research . Homeworkers, particularly ethnic
minority women, are vulnerable to state or employer harassment
and more likely to remain invisible in surveys, while the small
firm sector, perhaps the most important for these forms of employment, is one of the most difficult areas to study . But in large
firms (the subject of the 'flexible firm' model), Millward and
Stevens (1986) found a decline in all these forms of employment
between 1980 and 1984. This is explained mainly by the contraction in manufacturing. There is thus little evidence of the growth
of a 'periphery' composed of these workers .
Subcontracting . The alleged increase in subcontracting is
perhaps one of the most topical areas of the 'flexible firm', since it
relates most directly to the interest in Japanisation, in the fragmentation of production
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Generalisations about moving towards a small, highly
skilled and highly flexible workforce may fit one company
and be contradicted by the pressure towards a quite
different workforce in another . (IDS, 1986 : 1)
Similarly, a trade union based study of `flexibility' concludes
that, 'in spite of the impression created by a small number of
widely publicised case studies . . . a full range of flexible working
practices are not frequently implemented' (LRD,1986a : 5) . Many
`flexibility' agreements were only 'enabling' not faits-accomplis .
Nor was there, apart from rare exceptions, evidence of a 'core' in
terms of improved job security .
Even the NEDO (1986) study, which used the 'flexible firm'
as an analytical model, found extremely limited evidence for
'functional flexibility' . In manufacturing there was little 'radical
job enlargement' (NEDo, 1986 : 45) which crossed 'core trade'
boundaries; while three-quarters of respondents had achieved a
limited overlap between maintenance craftsmen, only a third had
achieved dual skiling even within electrical and mechanical trade
groups and only 15 per cent had achieved it across the electrical/
mechanical divide (ibid : 46) . Significantly, since the introduction
of technical change 'appeared to have the effect in most manufacturing companies of reducing the number, and skill level, of
tasks required by process operatives, the tendency was to reduce
the numbers of operatives and/or spread them more thinly across
the plant, adding a number of deskilled tasks to their job' (ibid :
50). Further, the greatest obstacle to increasing 'functional flexibility' was the cost of re-training, and shortage of training resources (ibid : 50) . And since a short-cut to skill shortage was
often the buying in of specialist labour, the development of
flexibility in the 'core' workforce was actually hindered .
In Britain 'core' status thus has a hollow ring, especially
when 'employment security boiled down in practice to a reduction in the threat of job loss rather than anything more positive'
(ibid : 79) . This is hardly a convincing case for a consolidating
'core' workforce .
The flexible firm: conclusions on the evidence
Flexibility
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Flexible
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Flexibility
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Flexibility
offlexible specialisation?
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Flexibility
segmentation, and starts from a false premise of initial homogeneity. It also reproduces the lack of clarity of dual labour
market analysis in providing no clear criteria for its dichotomisation (Pollen, 1987) .
It is an irony that Piore, who in the early 1970s pioneered
dual labour market analysis as an explanation of the underprivilege
of black workers (Doeringer & Piore, 1971), should recast his
perspective in a reversed form, the `secondary' industrial sector
becoming the beacon of progress, the ills of `secondary' labour
market conditions finding a cure .
Looking back to this early period, Piore recalls :
For us at the time the different fates of black and white
workers in the economy were the critical factors . 'Dualism'
captured the perceptions of black workers and of many
white workers and employers as well as the structure of
differences between black and white employment opportunities . (Berger & Piore, 1980 : 16)
One can begin to detect a shift of interest in the 1980s, with
the theorisation for what was largely a descriptive account of
dualism (Berger & Piore, 1980) . This looked towards the technological and political basis of economic uncertainty as the source of
dualism . Returning to Adam Smith's analysis of the relationship
between the division of labour and the size of the market, Piore
lays the foundations for the later elaboration of Fs, in a model of
industrial structure driven by the relationship between the structure of market demand and technological development and organisation (Berger & Piore, 1980 : 24) .
The growing interest in flexibility and uncertainty was already apparent in Berger's account of the resilience of the traditional sector in France and Italy (Berger & Piore, 1980) echoing
the enthusiasm of Italian segmentation theorists for the small
firms sector (e.g . Brusco, 1982; Solinas, 1982) .
Ultimately, this shift in priorities can be seen in political
terms . The segmentation tradition was not alone in turning its
attention to the secondary sector in this period . Recession, growing unemployment and deepening crisis at the end of the 1970s
meant that the small firm sector became both ideologically and
politically more significant, as a sector which might potentially
shoulder the risks and costs of 'economic recovery', and generate
some national employment growth (Gerry, 1985 : 300) . Although
the small business sector has 'proliferated' by high turnover,
rather than growth -'the birth and death rates of small enterprises
appear to have more or less matched one another in recent years'
(Gerry, 1985 : 308)-the ideological impact of the small-business/
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Flexibility
Piore and Sabel's fond references to Proudhon . . .
embedded at the heart of his understanding of the
independent, craft based working class - which he
celebrated - was the belief that women should only work in
the home and that any self-respecting working man ought to
be able to support his non-waged wife and children .
(Jenson, 1988 : 4)
Murray (1983, 1987) has shown the seamier side of decentralised production in the Third Italy : racial, gender, skill
and age divisions are essential to its success . Competition between
firms results in a survival of the fittest which appears in no way
ameliorated by local state intervention . Geographical fragmentation between firms and phases of production creates 'maximum
wage differentials between different groups of workers', undermining solidarity, and making union organisation 'an uphill
task' . Meanwhile 'much work can in no way be described as
prized and non-alienating craft labour' (Murray, 1987) .
Sharp differences between workforces and firms extends to
geographical fragmentation, so that privileged and successful
industrial regions, in the Third Italy, for example, can export the
insecurity, poor pay and working conditions needed to provide
'flexibility' with fluctuations in demand, to surrounding areas
(Solinas, 1982 : 334, 350 ; Brusco, 1982 : 177) .
Piore and Sabel rightly feel the need to defend FS from being
compared to 'the old Bourbon kingdom of Naples, where an
island of craftsmen, producing luxury goods for the court, was
surrounded by a subproletarian sea of misery' (1984 : 279) . Their
answer rests on a voluntarist vision of co-ordination of market
relations by local community structures and by national socialwelfare regulation . But the international perspectives are not
quite so rosy, or if so, only on the basis of harmonious inequality .
While it may be possible 'to modernise the burgeoning craft
sector of third world countries along the lines of flexible specialisation - rather than urging these countries to imitate the massproduction history of the advanced countries - (who does the
urging? - AP) - Piore and Sabel continue,
It is conceivable that flexible specialisation and mass
production could be combined in a unified international
economy . In this sytem, the old mass-production industries
might migrate to the underdeveloped world, leaving behind
in the industrialised world the high-tech industries and the
traditional dispersed conglomerates in machine tools,
garments, footwear, textiles, and the like-all revitalised
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Conclusions
Flexibility
on changes in labour, with `new technology' as companion to a
select few . The focus on labour is itself ideological, foreclosing
perspectives on international movements of capital, capital concentration, money markets, or the social distribution of wealth .
`New technology' too is conceived ideologically, as progressive,
neutral and inevitable .
The use of labour and new technology as part of the 'flexibility'
restructuring programme has allowed a benign recasting of dual
labour market theory . The 'flexible' workforce, and economy, is
to be composed of a technically advanced, but pliable, 'core', and
a disposable, elastic periphery . With the 'flexible firm', labour
market segmentation is resurrected as though it were new, with
no allusions to existing divisions by race, sex and age . With Piore
and Sabel, the secondary, small firms sector is re-interpreted as
the dynamic part of the economy, becoming, in this sense, the
'core' and ousting the ailing 'primary' sector firms based on
declining mass production. New, flexible technology thus becomes the saviour and economic transformer of what had been
the subordinate sector . In each approach, all labour flexibility is
celebrated as work enhancing, while decentralising and fragmentation are embraced . As such, the informal and secondary
economies are legitimised, and the significance of the disjuncture
between organised, collective and directly employed labour, and
isolated, atomised production is masked .
The convergence between these perspectives, and the neoclassical revival of the enterprise economy, individualised competition and policies of employment deregulation and attacks on
trade unionism lead one to question why such a broad ideological
consensus should have developed . Capitalist crisis, and the lack
of control by nation states over the system may predispose the
relinquishing of policies of control, towards an emphasis on the
primacy of 'markets', raising economic flexibility to be the panacea . At the same time, the concern of governments with small
businesses may itself be the product of the 'contradiction between
increasing involvement in the international economy and political
dependence upon a nationally/territorially defined social and
political structure' (Gerry, 1985 : 303) . That this perspective
should find its way into managemenr writing is not surprising .
Nor is it new for academic discourses to reinforce, reproduce and
legitimise a political consensus .
For 'radical' restructuring strategies to turn to what are
fundamentally market-dominated solutions of working with, not
against capital, suggests an abandonment of class analysis and
class action as the basis for change . This is one reflection of the
more general disorientation and demoralisation of the left . Fortunately there Downloaded
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This paper has therefore attempted to analyse the interweaving of 'flexibility' both in its concrete applications, and as
ideology. Seen in this way, the language of 'flexibility' reveals
itself as the language of social integration of the 1980s : how to live
with insecurity and unemployment, and learn to love it .
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the following people for their helpful comments and
suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper : Peter Armstrong,
Irene Bruegel, Fergus Murray, Peter Nolan, Ruth Pearson,
Chris Smith and John Ure .
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