Paradigms Of Flexibility: A Systematic Review Of Research On Workplace Flexibility

As flexibility has become a sine qua non of the contemporary workplace, we performed a critical review of its different uses and understandings in business and management research. Analyzing the literature on workplace flexibility in the period 1970-2018, using a four-part conceptual framework, and on the basis of subsequent content analysis of 262 most relevant publications, we identify two axes of tension embedding scholarly work on flexibility: the flexibility of vs. flexibility for organizations and employees, and a favorability-criticality tension. We further explain how internal divisions are attributable to three different paradigms of flexibility (two of which dominate), resulting from divergent sets of assumptions regarding: its target, rationale, approach to it, as well as methodologies involved in studying it. We propose a research agenda indicating the ways in which paradigmatic underpinnings of flexibility research may be further clarified and divisions between the paradigms made sense of.