Flexibilité appliquée aux ressources humaines. Compatibilités et contradictions

Since the 1980s, the search for flexibility leads companies to use different solutions such as temporary work, fixed-term contracts, part-time working, polyvalence, professional mobility, seasonal workers, subcontracting, collective competence, employee driven innovation, etc. The sources of flexibility are numerous. But are they compatible ? Can companies use temporary workers, for instance, and ask them to be autonomous, creative and highly competent ? Contradictions occurs whether flexibility has simultaneously to do with precarious employment relationships, or with the search for sustainable competence and cooperative abilities ; in other words, whether efficiency is looked for in a short term or in a long term perspective. After an exercise of review, classification and enumeration of the various possible sources of flexibility applied to the human resources, this article suggests substituting for the classical opposition internal flexibility vs. external flexibility, that of the qualitative flexibility (long term) vs. numerical flexibility (short term).