Farewell to flexibility? (-ch 1,3,4,5,6,14 only-)

From a fashionable fad of the 80s, "flexibility" is now at the centre of the debate on the nature of contemporary restructuring. On the one hand, there are those who view flexibility as the key to management and union discontentment. On the other hand, there are those who emphasize that the most striking features of industrial and employment relations in the 1980s were continuity and stability. This volume is a contribution to that process of change. Comprising original research and theoretical contributions from a multi-disciplinary range of leading contributors, it re-evaluates key controversies surrounding the nature of employment patterns, production relations and work organization. The book asks: has the concept of "flexibility" helped or hindered analysis?"; should the policies based on the term be pursued or rejected?; and what sort of language and framework might be more useful? This book should be of interest to all those concerned with current and future employment and production issues, in particular, students of industrial relations, industrial sociology, management, politics, social geography and labour economics.