Polarization and Differentiation of Employment Relations and New Organizational Models Critical Management Studies Conference

The main effort set out in this paper is a critique that the newer organizational models, largely by introducing flexible employment relations and by radically dissolving its traditional boundaries are increasingly loosing their work force as a source of sustainability. Special attention is devoted to the linkage between the rise of flexible employment relations, and the diminishing capability of newer organizational models to hold together its web of largely involuntary dependent and independent workers. I argue that this is a consequence of the growing inability to retain a skilled and knowledgeable workforce. In the first part of the paper I describe how the traditional organizational order is challenged and what models Charles Handy and Rosabeth Kanter claim to offer. I then summarize the main structural deficiencies of the Fordist organization and argue, that the newer organizational models do not offer a coherent solution to the diminishing social cohesion within the work force. I 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