The improving conditions of flexible work are blurring the world of work, but it is a useful form of flexible contract for employers. Critically examine this Contention?
Flexibility with in the work place really took off in the early 1980's. Research by John Atkinson discovered that organisations were beginning to see the importance of flexibility within the workforce. From this he developed the model of the flexible firm (Atkinson 1984), which claimed two types of flexibility; numerical and functional. The first deals with employing extra workers (part-time, temporary or contract) to meet fluctuations in demand and the second deals with the ease in which employees can switch between tasks and jobs within the organisation. Although Atkinson's model still remains a valued tool in today's society, flexibility within a workplace has now become much broader. Johnson (2004) explains, ?flexible arrangements tend to include part time or reduced hours, additional career breaks, assistance with child care and eldercare, extensions to statutory maternity leave, paternity leave, adoption leave, emergency leave working, job sharing, compressed work weeks, voluntary reduced time, flexible work schedules and working from home programmes'. All these arrangements have there advantages as well as disadvantages, but collectively show how work practices have changed and developed.
Over the last twenty years there has been a huge growth in the number of flexible workers within all employment sectors (Beatson 1995). Nearly ten years on, in spring 2003, according to Government National Statistics, 17.9% of men and 26.7% of women of all employed were involved in flexible working practices. Studies by Kerslake and Goulding (1996) show that within the UK Library and Information Se ...