Flexibility in Profile: An Empirical Analysis Based on the Data of 394 Belgian Companies

Various authors suggest that with reference to the organisation of labour a new era has come (Bridges, 1994; Gamst, 1995; Halcrow, 1997; Handy, 1995 Lefever and Broecks, 1997). In the past organisations could only deal with variations in demand using technical unemployment and temporary employment. Nowadays, organisations have a lot more flexibility to deal with these fluctuations. As the environment is getting more complex and changes are occuring more rapidly, organisations are faced with the issue of how to cope effectively with those changes and in which manner personnel management can stimulate flexibility. Flexibility can take so many shapes. Talking about flexibility is talking about atypical working arrangements, which means labour that is different from labour based on an employment contract for an indefinite period of time, full time, in the day-time, and on the usual working days. It seems that the traditional employment contract or the traditional full-time, long-term job in which the employee has to work a fixed amount of days a week or a fixed amount of hours a day a month, doing a well-defined job for an indefinite period of time, is under review again. Hence, it is being argued that flexible working practices could make organisations more versatile. Flexibility is regarded as one of the most important tools in the tough worldwide competition.