Introduction

Labor flexibility is an important and challenging focus for research on work and organizations in the Information Society of the 21^st century. The emergence of the Information Society (IS), basically due to the revolution of information and communication technologies (ICTs), has evoked a continuous debate. In the '90s the debate was dominated by issues related to the technological and infrastructure challenges involved, as well as the regulatory environment most conducive to enhancing the dissemination and use of ICT. Today the debate has entered a new phase, focusing on the many previously neglected social aspects of the IS. One of the main issues of the current debate is the impact of ICT on employment relationships and systems.

Rapid developments in technology and their consequent effects on product and service development provide a basis for changes in the organizational forms, the place and nature of work, and ultimately the employment relationship. A particular feature of the new ICT is the increased flexibility and transparency, which is reflected in the way firms are organizing production. This must be embedded in the organization of the workplace in order to achieve a competitive combination of performance, quality, and flexibility. The kinds of organization forms that enable employers to obtain the flexibility they need are denoted by the notion of the so-called flexible firm.

Two distinct strategies of labor utilization have been mostly accorded to the flexible firm. The first aims at improving performance by broadening the range of employees' skills through training in order to enhance their ability to perform a variety of tasks and participate in decision making. The second aims mainly at reducing costs by adjusting workers 'quantity'. Numerous terms have been used to refer to these two strategies. The most popular among these terms are functional vs. numerical flexibility (Atkinson, 1984; Smith, 1997), internal vs. external (Davis Blake & Uzzi, 1993), clan vs. market (Ouchi, 1980), dynamic vs. static (Deyo, 1997), and organization-focused vs. job-focused employment relations (Tsui, Pearce, Porter, & Hite, 1995).

Several studies have provided broad analysis of each kind of flexibility (Appelbaum & Batt, 1994; Wood, 1999; Pfeffer & Baron, 1988; Davis Blake & Uzzi, 1993; Houseman, 2001). Attempts have also been made to develop models of the relationship between functional and numerical flexibility, and to specify the conditions under which an organization will establish various combinations of standard and non-standard employment relationships (see the review by Kalleberg, 2001).

The idea of the 'flexible firm' as a framework for research on the interplay between the two forms of labor flexibility remains especially challenging for researchers in the frame of the Information Society because of its relevance not only to organizational performance, but also (through elevated levels of unemployment) to social cohesion.

Two major features of the IS may be identified as being of particular importance to the study of the flexible firm.

The first concerns the implication of ICT for changes in workers' skills, work organization, and job prospects. A system of skills and competence must be developed to deal with changes in the organization of the production and distribution of goods and services. The speed of employees' training must be adapted to the speed of change, whereas the concept of training must be brought closer to the concept of continuous learning. Improving skills and multi-skilling yield mutual benefits for both enterprises and workers. On one hand these are means of increasing companies' functional flexibility and competitiveness. On the other hand they help to avoid discrimination between workers, providing them the possibility to benefit from career opportunities in the knowledge society where upward mobility of knowledge workers is potentially unlimited under the assumption that the corporation needs them more than they need the corporation (Drucker, 2001).

The second centers on the implication of ICT for changing organizational forms, and for employment relations and employment protection. The impact of ICT in reshaping organizational forms involves the rise of the so-called network organizations, and the increase in the use of flexible working arrangements such as subcontracting, self-employment, temporary employment, and other forms of external employment for not only peripheral but very often core activities. While many flexible working practices have significant potential benefits for both employers and employees, there may be limits to their use. The increasing trend toward the external labor market flexibility, with greater mobility and transparency on job markets, could undoubtedly make firms wary of investing through training in human resources if the investment is likely to benefit competing firms. This could, however, result to use of flexible workers only for non-core activities. These flexible "peripheral" workers may be seen as a means of protecting the highly trained regular "core" labor force from fluctuations in demand, while allowing firms to achieve cost effectiveness (Kallenberg, 2001; Atkinson, 1984, 1987). This, in turn, could lead to workers' discrimination in a two-speed society, where "core" workers benefit from a standard open-ended employment contract, with its associated employment and training rights, while "peripheral' workers have to deal with insecurity of employment and downskilling. The implications of such forms of employment for the security of employees need to be carefully assessed.

The balance between flexibility for firms and security for workers should be examined, taking into account the appropriate combination of the use of forms of flexible employment on the one hand and of the development of workers' skills through training on the other. This is especially prominent for Europe in the shift towards the next society, where the dynamics of flexibility seem to be influenced not only by the dissemination of ICT but also by the demographic imbalances in the European labor force. Although beyond the scope of this study, it should be mentioned that current demographic trends show that the future working population of the EU will be split in two segments: one middle-aged, another youth determined (Drucker, 2001). And because the supply of the younger people will shrink, new employment patterns to allow the growing number of older people to remain in the labor market will become very important. The deployment and re-deployment of the older segment for project, yet strategic-based labor processes could enhance mobilization of knowledge, and facilitate innovation and value creation, under the assumption that this flexible older segment has the necessary skills to allow its integration.

This chapter investigates how flexible work organization in the IS—based on the improvement of skills through training on one hand and the use of flexible workers on the other—is stimulated and supported in Greek firms. It considers six different job groups, with different educational levels and different kinds of responsibilities, and identifies the level of training offered and the level of use of flexible workers within these groups. The central objective is to explore a firm's propensity to train its workforce while using numerically flexible working arrangements.

The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. First is a brief review of major works dedicated to the study of the flexible organization, including attempts to conceptualize employment systems that overcome the core-periphery model of the flexible firm about how firms may combine functional and numerical flexibility. Research methods and data analyses are presented in the following section. The results are presented therein-after. Conclusions and future research are discussed in the last section.