Farewell to Flexibility

Abstract

Part 1 Change and continuity in work and employment: the orthodoxy of flexibility, Anna Pollert the employment strategies of large firms, Paul Marginson task flexibility and the intensification of labour in British manufacturing during the 1980s, Tony Elger. Part 2 Restructuring rationales - productivity, cost controls or flexibility?: in a state of change - flexibility in the Civil Service, Peter Fairbrother the fragmentation of industrial R&D, Richard Whittington employment in the retail and hotel trades, Tim Walsh. Part 3 Flexible specialization - a new paradigm of production?: flexible specialization and small firms in Italy - myths and realities, Ash Amin from 1960s automation to flexible specialization - a deja vue of technological panaceas, Chris Smith restructuring and the politics of industrial renewal - the limits of flexible specialization, Peter Noland and Kathy O'Donnell. Part 4 Employment fragmentation and the culture: survey evidence on trends in non-standard employment, Bernard Casey the self-employed - small entrepreneurs or disguised wage labourers?, Helen Rainbird franchising - a testimony to the enterprise economy and economic restructuring in the 1980s?, Alan Felstead the small firm and the UK labour market in the 1980s, Steve Johnson. Conclusion: Plus ca change? - the theory of productions and the production of theory, Richard Hyman.