Theory and Practice of Flexible Work: Organizational and Individual Perspectives: Introduction to the Special Issue

IntroductionOver the last decades, scholars have paid consistent attention to the concepts of flexible work. This reflects the growing relevance of flexible work patterns in practice. The general assumption is that flexible work arrangements enable an organization to adapt its workforce to changes in the working environment, which is mainly based on Atkinson's (1984) groundbreaking 'flexible firm' model. In practice, we increasingly observe flexible work time arrangements and non-standard working conditions (e.g. 'temps' or contract workers). If flexibility enables organizations to adapt to changing demands from the environment from the organizational perspective the key issue of flexible work is to allocate the work force to the varying requirements of customers or production. From the employee perspective flexibility means to have options to choose, when, for how long and for which employer the employee wants to work. Both can be achieved by contractual flexibility (temporary employment, contract work) and by temporal and spatial flexibility (overtime, on-call work, flexitime, telecommuting). However, statements that follow the assumption that 'rigidity is dysfunctional; flexibility, functional' (Poliert, 1991, p. 9) fall short. This assumption is neither valid on the individual employee level nor on the organizational level. From a systemic perspective (Sennet, 1998), flexibility for one side (e.g. the organization) may often lead to constraints for the other side (e.g. the employee). Flexibility for an organization does not automatically imply flexibility in terms of decision latitude for employees. To cope with this paradox, scholars (e.g. Hoge, 2011; Hornung, Herbig & Glaser, 2008; Reilly, 1998) differentiate between capacity-oriented flexibility and employee-oriented flexibility or flexibility opportunities and flexibility demands to capture the potential positive or negative effects of flexibility on employees and organizations. Flexibility is also a relational concept and Johnsson (2006) makes a distinction between 'being flexible' and 'having flexibility'. Because of the asymmetrical power relation between the employer and the employee, it is typically the employer who has flexibility whilst the employee has to be flexible in relation to employee-friendly flexibility are relevant, with flexibility that can be positive or negative for each party.Furthermore, research emphasizes that the phenomenon of flexibility in general and of flexible work in particular is attended by aspects of stability. For instance, in the field of strategic organizational learning, researchers distinguish between explorative and exploitative learning (Raisch, Birkinshaw, Probst, & Tushman, 2009). Based on the work of Duncan (1976) researchers assume that organizations must implement dual structures in order to facilitate long-term success. More precisely, this ambidextrous situation holds also true for the field of flexible work. By simultaneously combining flexibility, innovation and new knowledge on one hand, and stability, efficiency and exploiting existing competencies on the other, firms would be continuously able to change and adapt to environmental dynamics. The theory path-dependency and path-breaking follows a similar logic (Sydow, Schreyogg & Koch 2009). In the economic literature, we find much research regarding how firms can realize a flexible workforce (e.g. Mayne, Tregaskis, & Brewster, 1996; Wright & Snell, 1998; Lai, Soltani, & Baum, 2008). While this research supposes that flexible work has economic benefits and is therefore a valid goal for firms, we also find criticism within the discourse on flexible work concerning the negative side-effects of flexible work. Kozica & Kaiser (2012) state that researchers with sociological backgrounds have extensively discussed job insecurity, which has increased in parallel with the increase in flexible working practices (Beck, 2000; Cooper, 2008; Doogan, 2001; Hesseling & van Vuuren, 1999; Lambert, 2008). …