The Polarization and Differentiation of Employment Relations and New Organizational Models

The main effort set out in this article is to problematize that the newer organizational models, largely by introducing flexible employment relations and by radically dissolving the traditional boundaries of the firm, are losing their flexibilized workforce as a firm-specific source of success. Special attention is devoted to the linkage between the rise of flexible employment relations and the diminishing capability of newer organiza tional models to sustain firm-specific sources of competitive advantage. We argue that this decreasing capa bility is a consequence of the growing inability to retain a skilled and knowledgeable workforce. In the first part of the article we describe how the traditional organizational order is challenged. We then summarize the main structural deficiencies of the Fordist organization and argue that the newer organizational models do not offer a coherent solution to these problems. We continue to discuss the linkage between the consequences of the growing dissolution of standard employment and the decreasing capability of the newer organizational models to retain and reproduce the sources of their sustainability. We emphasize that the workforce increas ingly is a non-replicable and firm-specific source of sustainable advantage that cannot be easily imitated by competitors if retained within organizational boundaries.