The flexicurity concept has been increasingly presented as a preferred way of dealing with the deregulation of the labour market because it seems to permit the resolution of a contradiction which is gradually eroding the European social modelfoundations: maintening the “welfare state” in a liberalised and deregulated economic context. The concept is promising, as it opens the debate on a whole series of combinations between atypical employment forms and various security devices, through the adaptation of the existing social protection systems. The concept is unifying, insofar as it necessarily involves the implementation of a new kind of dialogue between the various stakeholders involved in the labour market, in order to develop a common, coordinated and balanced framework for collective action.
However, the concepts of flexibility and security cover very different, highly complex and often hybrid realities, and the categories traditionally offered to comprehend these notions do not take sufficient account of the heterogeneity of concrete situations.This is the reason why the empirical exploration of the needs of flexibility and security at the individual level will be a key dimension of the proposed research project. As a preliminary step, a qualitative approach will be used (face-to-face interviews with employees and employers in 20 Belgian organizations), involving simultaneously work psychologists (ValoRH) and management scientists (LENTIC) in order to elaborate relevant items for the quantitative survey and to provide a rich empirical basis for further exploration of flexicurity devices at the organizational level. In a second step, we will mobilize a large-scale web survey (at least 2,000 employees from relevant organizations in respect to flexibility and/or security requirements) in order to examine how the discrepancy between individual’s needs and organization’s offers will relate to a set of individual and organizational outcomes.
We also will undertake a detailed and longitudinal analysis (via semi-structured interviews, observation and document analysis) of a dozen attempts, in Belgium and in other similar economies, to reconcile flexibility/security at the organizational level, particularly when they concern job transitions. Some of these initiatives may be legal and regulatory devices (collective agreements, decrees, laws). But most of them appear to be emerging inter-organizational practices, based either on job pooling or job posting principles. We can of course examine the extent to which these less institutionalized devices seem to satisfy immediate needs of flexibility and security emanating from the various stakeholders concerned, even if they do not always respect existing regulations. But we have also to pay attention to the “perverse” effects they may produce, due to asymmetrical power relationships. The role of third-party actors seems to be crucial here but one must admit that until now, few research is available on the sustainability of emerging flexicurity practices at the organizational level. An in-depth exploration of the emerging and deliberate attempts to reconcile flexibility and security at the organizational level is thus a second important challenge of the proposed research project. Referring to the actor-network theory and the institutional entrepreneurship theory frameworks, we will scrutinize the conditions under which such initiatives can be institutionalized thanks to the role of third-party actors, on the basis of our sample of case studies, supplemented by the analysis of ten other interorganizational initiatives. Management scientists (LENTIC) and sociologists (CRIS) will be here working together on the selected case studies.
Making the concept of flexicurity more operational eventually leads to envisaging the evolutions occuring on the labour market level. The various attempts to reconcile flexibility and security do not simply rely on “traditional” actors (employers, unions, public agencies): they imply the development of new mediating roles aimed at accompanying job transitions, negotiating compromises and facilitating fluider combinations between labourdemand and supply. What kind of actors may take in charge such new roles? What are the specificities of public mediators (in terms of methods, targets, professional ethics, etc.) in a context of radical redefinition of the European Social State? More generally, we will decipher, as a third objective of the research project, the components and the main effects of mediating actionsat the labour market level. A sample of 15 Belgian in-depth case studies of public, private and non-profit mediating devices will be selected on the Belgian labour market, mixing semi-structured interviews, observation and document analysis. The sociology of conventions and the economic sociology will help us to understand the conditions under which mediators can contribute to a long-lasting and balanced design of new social compromises.
A cross-fertilization of psychological, managerial and sociological regards coming from ValoRH, LENTIC and CRIS will be needed to pursue these three research objectives. Moreover, given the questions permanently addressed to the legal framework, a close cooperation with experts in law and philosophy will have to be established, at different steps of the project, via sub-contracts with colleagues from other Universities.