IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v6y1992i2p251-270.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Employment Flexibility and Human Resource Management: The Case of Three American Electronics Plants

Author

Listed:
  • John Francis Geary

    (Industrial Relations Research Unit, University of Warwick)

Abstract

This paper critically examines management's recruitment of temporary labour at three U.S. electronics firms operating in the Republic of Ireland. Recent discussions around the flexible firm and human resource management models would suggest that the recruitment of a secondary labour force is a strategic and advantageous practice. This paper is critical of these assumptions. It was found that management's reliance on temporary employees gave rise to a number of contradictions and tensions, and in the end was considered to be disadvantageous. This paper is also critical of the flexibility literature's neglect of employees' response to these initiatives. This paper corrects this shortcoming. The counterposing of `flexibility' and `rigidity' as opposites is also criticised.

Suggested Citation

  • John Francis Geary, 1992. "Employment Flexibility and Human Resource Management: The Case of Three American Electronics Plants," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 6(2), pages 251-270, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:6:y:1992:i:2:p:251-270
    DOI: 10.1177/095001709262005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/095001709262005
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/095001709262005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elizabeth George, 2003. "External Solutions and Internal Problems: The Effects of Employment Externalization on Internal Workers' Attitudes," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(4), pages 386-402, August.
    2. Santos, Miguel, 2010. "From Training to Labour Market. Holocletic Model," MPRA Paper 26617, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. George, Elizabeth. & Chattopadhyay, Prithviraj., 2015. "Non-standard work and workers : organizational implications," ILO Working Papers 994883083402676, International Labour Organization.
    4. Elizabeth George & Prithviraj Chattopadhyay & Lida L. Zhang, 2012. "Helping Hand or Competition? The Moderating Influence of Perceived Upward Mobility on the Relationship Between Blended Workgroups and Employee Attitudes and Behaviors," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(2), pages 355-372, April.
    5. Jos Gamble & Qihai Huang, 2009. "One Store, Two Employment Systems: Core, Periphery and Flexibility in China's Retail Sector," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 47(1), pages 1-26, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:6:y:1992:i:2:p:251-270. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.