The Emergence of Flexible Networks in the UK Television Industry

Abstract

SUMMARY‘Flexibility’ became a management buzz word in the mid‐to‐late 1980s. Environmental pressures drove firms in many industries towards more flexible structures – away from internal, classical hierarchies towards agent networks brought together on individual project‐task grounds. The goal of many organizations, according to proponents of this trend, became that of seeking ‘flexible specialization’– integrating specialist resources in a dynamic, flexible fashion. Critics of the drive towards flexibility argue that the phenomenon has been overemphasized, and that large‐scale bureaucracies geared for mass production are still the dominant structural form. This paper overviews the arguments concerning flexibility and related arguments concerning the emergence of networked forms of organization. Flexibility trends within the UK television industry are then explored to illustrate the emergence of ‘flexible specialization’ and a ‘dynamic network’ form of organization. Television thus serves as an important counter‐factual to the dismissive claims of the critics of flexibility.