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Flexibility, Politics & Strategy: In Defence of the Model of the Flexible Firm

Department of Management at Keele University

Michael Rowlinson

School of Management and Finance at the University of Nottingham

Louise McArdle,

Department of Organisation at the University of Central Lancashire

John Hassard

Department of Management at Keele University

Paul Forrester

Department of Management at Keele University

This paper offers a defence of Atkinson's model of the flexible firm. It takes issue with two arguments against it: that the model needs to be understood at a political level, as part of a wider `post-industrial' vision; and that the observed increase in flexibility offers the model no support because of its `non-strategic' nature. On the first of these it is argued that flexibility operates on a different level from flexible specialisation and other varieties of `post-industrialism' and that to consider them together confuses rather than illuminates the debate. On the second, it is argued that the criticism relies on an unnecessarily restrictive view of strategy. Rather than being regarded as `plans', strategies should be regarded as `patterns' in decision-making. On the basis of this alternative conception the paper suggests ways in which the flexible firm model might be recast.

Work, Employment & Society, Vol. 8, No. 2, 221-242 (1994)
DOI: 10.1177/095001709482004


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