Different meanings of workplace flexibility on the basis of paradigms of flexibility: A systematic review of workplace flexibility

By Professor Matthijs Bal, Lincoln International Business School and Dr Michal Izak, University of Roehampton Business School

It doesn’t seem to be the case that one can discuss benefits of workplace flexibility without carefully unpicking complexities of the matter at hand, including perspective from which those benefits are claimed (employee or organisational) and type of flexibility concerned (the four mentioned above). In addition, research methodology matters – to paraphrase, if your only research tool is a hammer then chances are your findings will strangely assume the shape of metallic elongated objects.

In our new paper, recently published in the European Management Review – entitled ‘Paradigms of Flexibility: A Systematic Review of Research on Workplace Flexibility’ – we have conducted a broad bibliometric analysis of literature relevant to workplace flexibility taking each of those three factors into account (type of flexibility, perspective and methodology)It . Analyzing the literature on workplace flexibility in the period 1970-2018, with a particular focus on the last decade (2008-2018), we used a four-part conceptual framework mentioned above, and on the basis of subsequent content analysis of 262 most relevant publications, we identified two fundamental axes of tension embedding scholarly work on flexibility: the flexibility of vs. flexibility for organizations and employees, and a favourable (uncritically positive) vs critical approaches. In this paper we explain how internal divisions between different flexibility concepts are attributable to three different paradigms of flexibility, each complete with its own set of assumptions. We find that ‘while flexibility is construed differently across the paradigms, its meaning is assumed to be undisputed within each paradigm. In other words: each of the notions of flexibility appears universal within the dominating paradigms, while comparison between the paradigms shows that those meanings are positioned within as well as specific to the paradigms, and divergent between them.’.

In short, when workplace flexibility is discussed, it does matter who speaks, because different speakers may not share the same meanings regarding flexibility and may not have the same intentions when introducing it/asking for it, therefore they are unlikely to agree as long as they don’t make those differences explicit. Making them explicit – creating a shared communication platform on which the assumptions made by speakers would be put in the open – is what we hope our findings may encourage.

To read on, see: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/emre.12423

Matthijs Bal is a Professor of Responsible Management at the Lincoln International Business School. He has worked at the University of Bath, VU University Amsterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam prior to joining Lincoln. His research interests concern workplace dignity, individualization, workplace flexibility, psychological contract, fictional narratives and critical approaches to HRM and management studies. Matthijs Bal has published a book on Workplace Dignity book with Palgrave MacMillan in 2017.Matthijs is also active around the theme of the Future of Work and Organizational Psychology.

Dr Michal Izak, SFHEA, Reader in Business and Management at the University of Roehampton Business School.