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Belgium (INRCT/NOVA): Productivity and Working Conditions
Denmark (DTI): Company Flexibility - the Key to Efficiency
Finland: Competitiveness, Quality and Productivity
France: Managing through Competences/Skills
Germany (RKW): Productivity and Employment
Productivity and Employment: Tony Hubert
Hungary (HPC): Productivity & Competition and Quality
Ireland (IPC): Productivity & Partnership
Italy (CPV): Productivity and Innovation and Technology
The Netherlands (TNO Work and Employment): Productivity and Work Organisation and Learning Organisations
Productivity and Environmental Protection: Tony Hubert
Denmark (DTI): Company Flexibility - the Key to Efficiency
In the middle of the 1990's Professor Bengt-Åke Lundvall and a research team at the University of Aalborg1 started to study the concept 'flexibility' in Danish companies2. The research was partly based on a comprehensive quantitative analysis among Danish companies, partly on a large number of personal interviews with owners and executives of Danish companies. The team's results were combined with information from public data banks, among other things to analyse the financial results of different types of companies. In short, the result was that flexible companies:Approximately 25% of Danish companies are regarded as flexible, and approximately 40% are regarded as static or non-flexible. The remainder, approximately 35%, employs different kinds of flexibility without having the flexibility as defined by the research project.
On the basis of these results, the Danish government set up a policy to the effect that at least half of the Danish companies must be flexible. Consequently, the government was prepared to support the Knowledge Centre for Flexibility, which has now been established. The Centre is financed by the Danish ministry of Industry under the so called "Centre contract" grants - which are applied research and development grants in innovative and forefront areas of relevance to a broader business community.
Knowledge Centre for Flexibility
The Knowledge Centre for Flexibility consists of scientists, companies and consultants from the Danish Technological Institute.3 It was established in the spring of 1998 with the following objectives:
The Knowledge Centre for Flexibility originally found that flexibility could already be incorporated into the procedures of the company and/or people working in the organisation. The two types of flexibility are called 'procedural flexibility' and 'generative flexibility' respectively. In relation to these two types of flexibility, it should be remembered that Danish executives often involve their employees in many decisions relating to both operational tasks as well as company development tasks. Thus, it is accepted that employees take on responsibility and act on their own initiative and that they work independently as well as in autonomous groups and teams. Consequently, we therefore need to work with both types of flexibility. American surveys, for instance, show that up to 80% of companies that have worked with BPR (Business Process Reengineering), which can be very much influenced by procedure, are disappointed in the results, which is probably due to the fact that BPR deals with procedures not employees.
Flexibility as a source of efficiency
A so-called 'Flexibility Wheel' has been developed to measure the flexibility of a company, cf. the figure below.
The Flexibility Wheel consists of 11 parameters based on four parameters from Leavitt's model 4 for the structure of an organisation and Garvin's model 5 with five parameters describing the processes that take place in an organisation. The Knowledge Centre for Flexibility has added two parameters, i.e., the external relations that must capture the flexibility of outsourcing and working in close networks with other companies, which are not legally connected and owned by the same group, and a parameter for management. An organisation's score (5 means very flexible and 1 means very rigid) on the 11 parameters is found through a questionnaire answered by executives and/or employees of the organisation that take part in the process.
Working with such a concept as flexibility, it is important to have types and illustrations with which to compare. Therefore, eight very comprehensive interviews have been carried out with Danish companies that give a very clear picture of what flexibility means to them, how they perceive themselves and the benefits they derive from this flexibility. In contrast, the Knowledge Centre for Flexibility has also worked with the 'general concept of flexibility' by studying the media's mention of 19 Danish companies' flexibility and flexible work methods. This has led to three types of companies, i.e.
In order to establish the ideal profile, the Knowledge Centre for Flexibility is presently working with several models. One is to let executives and employees complete the questionnaire of the Flexibility Wheel based on their perception of what the companies ought to look like. A second model is to let executives and employees draw their own ideal wheel without using the questionnaire. Finally, a third model involves letting the company's business partners point out where they believe that the company is the least or the most flexible. After the ideal profile has been established the company is helped to define proper actions in order to reach the ideal flexibility profile.
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