Dialectics of workplace flexibility between humanistic ideal and neoliberal ideology–preliminary considerations. Psychologie des Alltagshandelns / Psychology of Everyday Activity 12(2), 73 - 83.

Abstract

In this article, we present some preliminary thoughts regarding the development of a distinctively critical perspective on research and practice of workplace flexibility. We thus aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of some of the observed tensions, contradictions, and antagonisms, and, described as the “Janus-faced character”, the “double-edged sword” or the “paradox” of workplace flexibility. At the core of our perspective is a conceptualization of workplace flexibility as an inherently dialectical societal phenomenon, which simultaneously reflects and promises humanistic ideals regarding individual autonomy, self-actualization and self-determination, but at the same time, is also outgrowth and embodiment of neoliberal ideology, serving particular interest of employers and capital owners to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of human resource utilization. First, we will address the humanistic potential of workplace flexibility in terms of employee-oriented individual flexibility – in contrast to employer-oriented organizational flexibility. Second, we will argue that workplace flexibility, its manifestation in organizational and individual practices, as well as the entirety of academic and public discourses on the topic, are deeply contaminated by neoliberal ideology. Finally, we will integrate these two perspectives into a dialectical conceptualization of workplace flexibility and discuss some implications, usefulness, and prospects of the flexibility concept for the project of a radically humanistic and emancipatory work and organizational psychology.

Full text

ABSTRACT
In this article, we present some preliminary thoughts regarding the development of a distinctively critical perspective
on research and practice of workplace flexibility. We thus aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of some of the
observed tensions, contradictions, and antagonisms, and, described as the „Janus-faced character“, the „double-edged
sword“ or the „paradox“ of workplace flexibility. At the core of our perspective is a conceptualization of workplace flex-
ibility as an inherently dialectical societal phenomenon, which simultaneously reflects and promises humanistic ideals
regarding individual autonomy, self-actualization and self-determination, but at the same time, is also outgrowth and
embodiment of neoliberal ideology, serving particular interest of employers and capital owners to increase the effective-
ness and efficiency of human resource utilization. First, we will address the humanistic potential of workplace flexibility
in terms of employee-oriented individual flexibility – in contrast to employer-oriented organizational flexibility. Second,
we will argue that workplace flexibility, its manifestation in organizational and individual practices, as well as the entirety
of academic and public discourses on the topic, are deeply contaminated by neoliberal ideology. Finally, we will inte-
grate these two perspectives into a dialectical conceptualization of workplace flexibility and discuss some implications,
usefulness, and prospects of the flexibility concept for the project of a radically humanistic and emancipatory work and
organizational psychology.
Keywords
Employee-oriented workplace flexibility – dialectics – paradox – humanistic management – neoliberal ideology – system-
justifying ideologies
Dialectics of workplace flexibility between humanistic ideal and
neoliberal ideology – Preliminary considerations
Severin Hornung & Thomas Höge
University of Innsbruck, Institute of Psychology
2019 – innsbruck university press, Innsbruck
Journal Psychologie des Alltagshandelns / Psychology of Everyday Activity, Vol. 12 / No. 2, ISSN 1998-9970
In economically advanced Western societies, the
changing nature of work and organizations confronts
individuals with systemic „paradoxes“ – creating am-
biguous, ambivalent, contradictory, or overtaxing
work situations (Gouliquer, 2000; Kalleberg, 2011; Put-
nam, Myers & Gailliard, 2014; cf. Glaser, Hornung &
Höge, 2019). Driven by economic crises and pressures,
escalating and emerging „new“ stressful demands
arise from constantly reconfiguring working environ-
ments, dissolving job boundaries, employment insecu-
rity, and ever-increasing performance and flexibility
requirements of employers (Allan, O’Donell & Peetz,
1999; Archibald, 2009; Burchell, Ladipo & Wilkinson,
2002; Höge & Hornung, 2015; Pedaci, 2010). Argu-
ably, organizational efforts to increase flexibility via
strategies of de-regulation and de-bureaucratization,
along with „high-involvement“ human resource (HR)
management and autonomy-oriented work practices,
also increase opportunities to individualize and (self-)
enrich one’s work experience (Boxall & Macky, 2014;
Hornung, Höge, Glaser & Weigl, 2017; Kashefi, 2009;
Nordbäck, Myers & McPhee, 2017). Pursuing self-de-
termination and actualization tendencies, employees
use unspecified „white spaces“ to customize job fea-
tures, improving fit with personal and professional
interests and goals, supporting fulfillment of work-
related needs, and pursuing increasingly diversified
lifestyles, careers, and occupational identities (Gubler,
Arnold & Coombs, 2014; Miscenko & Day, 2016). This
dual character of workplace flexibility as source of
stressful demands and reduced social cohesion, and
enhanced possibilities for personal growth and „indi-
viduation“, is a recurring dialectic (Alvesson & Will-
mott, 1992; Reedy, King & Coupland, 2016; cf. Höge,
2019). In this article, we present preliminary thoughts
and suggestions on a distinctively critical perspective

74 S. Hornung & T. Höge
can take on more or less coercive or enabling forms
(Adler & Borys, 1996), that HR management can be
oriented towards the common good (Chiva, 2014), that
there is a „high-road“ in employment relations (Os-
terman, 2018), and that, generally, alternative forms
of work organization and humanistic management
promoting employee health, personality and moral
development are possible (Reedy et al., 2016; Weber
& Jeppesen, 2017; Weber, Unterrainer & Höge, 2008).
The perspective of individual flexibility focuses on the
circumstances under which work arrangements are
genuinely, and not just in theory or rhetoric, chosen
voluntarily and based on mutual advantages for both
employees and employers, mindful of diverging
economic interests and implications of flexibility
raising tensions with a „new quality of work“. Notwith-
standing the rich bundle of paradoxes and tensions
associated with workplace flexibility, one domain,
where employee and employer interest are commonly
regarded as closely aligned is the task-related dimen-
sion of functional flexibility (van den Berg & van der
Velde, 2005). In addition to the temporal or numerical
aspects, the concept of employee-oriented flexibility
also applies to the functional dimension (Hornung at
al., 2008). From the organizational perspective, this re-
fers to employing multi-skilled or „polyvalent“ human
resources, which are able to fulfill a broad range of
different tasks or jobs, thus generating dynamic capa-
bilities with regard to the scope, quality, and quantity
of deliverable products or services. From an employee
perspective, functional flexibility can be defined as
the ability to exercise influence over their works tasks
to better align the fulfillment of job duties with their
personal and professional preferences, needs, inter-
ests, values, or goals. Based on such an employee-
oriented reconceptualization of flexibility, a humanis-
tic approach towards flexibility that serves to provide
workers with real control over work tasks and other
features and conditions of their jobs, can be grounded
in well-established traditions of human-oriented work
design, such as action-regulation theory (Hacker &
Sachse, 2014). A main proposition of action-regulation
theory is that the psychologically most relevant unit
of analysis, according to the primacy of the work task,
is the human work activity, characterized by inherent
features of the work and the conditions under which
it is carried out (Oesterreich & Volpert, 1986; Ulich,
2011). In this tradition, the work task, rather than the
economic or social exchange relationship, is seen as
the core psychological link between the individual and
the organization. Drawing on Russian activity theory,
the notion of person-task dialectics describes work as
the goal-directed transformation of objects (or infor-
mation) through which the working subjects are also
changed themselves (Weber & Jeppesen, 2017; cf.
Frese, Garst & Fay, 2007). Based on the socializing or
on research and practice of flexibility at work. We
share our dialectic understanding of tensions, contra-
dictions, and antagonisms, variously described as the
„Janus-face“, „double-edged sword“, „Pandora’s Box“
and „paradox“ of workplace flexibility (Cañibano,
2019; Gouliquer, 2000; Putnam et al., 2014). Flexibil-
ity is analyzed as a dialectical societal phenomenon,
which promises the realization of humanistic ideals
of individual autonomy, self-actualization, and self-
determination, but is also outgrowth and embodi-
ment of neoliberal ideology (Bal & Hornung, 2019). As
such, it serves particular (socially, ethically, and mor-
ally questionable) interest of employers, investors, and
management to increase effectiveness and efficiency
of HR utilization (e.g., Burchell et al., 2002). First, we
focus on potentials for humanistic management to pro-
liferate work practices promoting employee-oriented
flexibility – as opposed to the antipode of employer-
oriented organizational flexibility as restructuring and
rationalization strategy (Hornung, Glaser & Rousseau,
2018). Second, contributing to a current disciplinary
debate (Bal & Dóci, 2018), we argue that workplace
flexibility, its manifestation in organizational prac-
tices and individual behavior, applied research in the
workplace, and academic and public discourses, are
deeply entrenched in and contaminated by neoliber-
al ideology. Lastly, we consider ways to dialectically
comprehend these two antipodes, provide examples,
and discuss the usefulness of the flexibility concept for
humanistic, critical, and emancipatory perspectives in
psychological scholarship.
Flexibility as humanistic ideal
For disentangling contradicting implications of work-
place flexibility it has been suggested to distinguish
between employer-oriented organizational flexibility
and employee-oriented individual flexibility (Hornung
et al., 2008, 2018). These two forms of flexibility dif-
fer in who has the control over flexibility potentials.
Organizational flexibility describes institutional con-
trol over short-term changes in financial, numerical,
temporal, locational, and functional parameters of the
workforce, and HR management systems improving
the alignment of supplied capacities and capabilities
with changing and limitedly predictable requirements
of dynamic market environments (Kalleberg, 2003). In
contrast, employee-oriented individual flexibility re-
fers to the control individuals possess to vary, adjust, or
modify their work and employment conditions to bet-
ter fit personal needs, preferences, values, and goals
– without incurring disproportionate losses, disadvan-
tages or risks (e.g., discrimination due to nonstandard
hours; Munsch, 2016). Contrasting organizational and
individual flexibility reflects claims that bureaucracy

Dialectics of workplace flexibility 75
personality-forming function of work, this comprises
not only work-related knowledge, skills, and abilities,
but, in the longer term, also more stable personal ori-
entations and behavior patterns (Frese, Kring, Soose
& Zempel, 1996). Dynamic processes of reciprocal
determination are assumed to be driven by individu-
als’ innate actualization tendency, for instance, striv-
ing towards fulfillment of growth-related psychologi-
cal needs for autonomy, competence, relatedness,
and meaning at work (Deci, Olafsen & Ryan, 2017).
Flexibility-oriented, proactive work design constructs
like job crafting (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001) and
idiosyncratic deals (Rousseau, 2015) conceptualize
workers as active designers of their jobs from bottom-
up, rather than passive „recipients“ of „top-down“
implemented job-design and some scholars empha-
size the employee-oriented, humanistic potential of
these „micro-emancipatory“ approaches (Alvesson &
Willmott, 1992; Hornung et al., 2018; Melé, 2003). Re-
search relating such constructs to worker health and
well-being supports the potential of workplace flex-
ibility for humanistic management. However, still too
little theoretical and empirical work addresses ques-
tions on how employee-oriented conceptions of flex-
ibility can be implemented as elements of procedural
justice (Hornung, Doenz & Glaser, 2016), embedded
into democratic organizational structures (Weber et
al., 2008), and, become building blocks of a new gen-
eration of quality of working life initiatives (Grote &
Guest, 2017).
Flexibility as neoliberal ideology
Any interpretation of workplace flexibility as a primar-
ily humanistic concept, would have to close its eyes to
a large body of interdisciplinary literature identifying
detrimental aspects of flexibility-oriented practices,
resulting, for example, in work intensification and
extensification, job insecurity, alienation, decreased
social cohesion, and impaired psychophysical health
(Archibald, 2009; Höge, 2019; Höge & Hornung, 2015;
Kubicek, Korunka Paškvan, Prem & Gerdenitsch, 2014;
Sennett, 1999). Here, we will elaborate on a com-
mon argument that workplace flexibility is ambigu-
ous, because it includes both employee-oriented and
employer-oriented practices, where the latter demand
employee adaptivity and restrict their autonomy (Gou-
liquer, 2000; Knights & Willmot, 2002; Putnam, 2001).
Expanding and accentuating the academic discourse,
we offer a perspective on workplace flexibility as a
practice and a topic of scientific inquiry that is strongly
permeated and biased by neoliberal ideology. Skipping
over the numerous elaborated (neutral and critical)
definitions, we use the term „ideology“ for a body of
meanings and practices that encode certain interests
relevant to social power (Eagleton, 1991; Thompson,
1990). Ideologies strive for societal hegemony, le-
gitimating and obscuring the underlying interests by
means of universalization and naturalization of the
status quo. Denying or suppressing alternative per-
spectives, assumptions, and interpretations, eventually
makes even the possibility of another reality unthink-
able (Fiori, 1970; Eagleton, 1991; Jost & van der Toorn,
2012). Attaining hegemony means that ideological
beliefs have been disseminated „top-down“ from the
powerful social groups whose interests they objec-
tively serve to the subordinated social groups whose
interests they objectively contradict (Jost, Federico
& Napier, 2009). If the latter internalize those ideo-
logically biased belief-systems, the paradox situation
arises that the same disadvantaged groups justify, up-
hold, and quasi from the „bottom-up“ reproduce the
status quo of a social order that runs counter to their
individual and collective socio-economic interests.
Rewarding and likely unconsciously motivating this
„intellectual self-mutilation“ is the „palliative“, health-
conserving function of reducing cognitive dissonance,
a well-tested core proposition of psychological system-
justification-theory (Jost, 2019).
The dominant political-economic ideology to-
day, all around the globe but especially in Western
societies, is neoliberalism (e.g., Harvey, 2005; Plehwe,
Walpen & Neunhöffer, 2007). Although we agree that
„neoliberalism“ is a complex, diverse, and problem-
atic term (Dunn, 2017), we still find it useful, as there
is at least some consensus on its usage. Neoliberal-
ism stands for a transnational version of laissez-faire
(American) corporate and financial capitalism, empha-
sizing free enterprise, free markets and trade, priva-
tization, deregulation, and, advancing the interests
of economic elites, such as businesses, shareholders,
and management (LaMothe, 2016). Recently, Bal and
Dóci (2018) initiated a debate on the role of neoliberal
ideology in today’s workplaces and specifically within
work and organizational psychology as an academic
discipline. We contend that research and practice of
workplace flexibility provides an exemplary case for
the ways in which neoliberal ideology influences aca-
demia and practice by interest-driven conceptualiza-
tions, constructs, and conventions. According to Bal
and Dóci (2018) neoliberal ideology influences work-
place practices and work and organizational psychol-
ogy via three political logics: instrumentality (e.g.,
employees as means to achieve organizational goals),
individualism (e.g., stressing employee self-reliance),
and competition (e.g., increasing individual and orga-
nizational competitiveness as the central criterion of
all workplace practices). These three logics are argued
to proliferate superior-inferior narratives, themes of
social Darwinism, and notions of social engineering,
tacitly shaping theory and practice, for instance, em-

76 S. Hornung & T. Höge
phasizing personnel assessment and selection, instead
of development and worker emancipation, individual
behavior instead of collective agency, and job and or-
ganizational performance, instead of individual and
collective happiness, dignity, social responsibility and
contributions to the common good.
Employer-oriented flexibility, in terms of mana-
gerial strategies to improve organizational competi-
tiveness and profits by de-regulation and increasing
the numerical, temporal and functional adaptability of
the workforce evidently are manifestations of neolib-
eral logic (Bal & Dóci, 2018; LaMothe, 2016). However,
even more human-oriented strands of flexibility-relat-
ed practices and research involve risks of legitimiz-
ing, proliferating, and obscuring doctrines of neolib-
eral ideology. We will discuss this for two exemplary
applications: 1) The increasingly dominating belief in
employee self-reliance, reflected in individual-level,
flexibility-related proactive behavior concepts like
job crafting (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001) and idio-
syncratic deals (Rousseau, 2015); and 2) the related
discourse on the changing and „new“ psychological
contracts between employees and organizations in
the flexible world of work (Cullinane & Dundon, 2006;
Hornung & Rousseau, 2017). An instructive example
for the interest-driven, system-justifying and palliative
effects of the neoliberal ideological belief of employ-
ee self-reliance is the empirical research on the roles
of managerial ideologies in mass layoffs. Ideological
foundations of organizational downsizing were initially
identified in managerial beliefs in neoliberal principles
of de-regulation, de-bureaucratization and employee
self-reliance (McKinley, Mone & Barker, 1998). Empiri-
cal studies confirmed that adherence to neoliberal ide-
ologies of market competition and shareholder value,
displayed in the annual reports of U.S. utility compa-
nies, predicted the occurrence and scope of managerial
downsizing decisions (Rust & McKinley, 2016). Mixed
results were found for an ideology of employee worth,
stressing the instrumental „value“ of human assets.
This finding can be explained by conceptual overlaps
with an ideology of employee self-reliance, prescrib-
ing that employees should be fully independent and
self-responsible in their employment and careers, in-
cluding qualification, training, and skill development
(McKinley et al., 1998; Rust & McKinley, 2016). This
„managerial“ ideology has been shown to be internal-
ized by employees, apparently driven by psychological
defense mechanisms against the traumatizing effects
of violations of reciprocity. A study from the employee
side found that adopting an ideology of self-reliance
„inoculated“ employees against experiencing stress-
ful psychological contract violation, even when getting
laid off, demonstrating a „palliative“ role of this emerg-
ing „new“ system-justifying employment ideology (Ed-
wards, Rust, McKinley & Moon, 2003).
Antipode of the ideology of employee self-reliance
is employer reliance. Employer reliance reflects pa-
ternalistic notions of organizational responsibility for
employee development and welfare, underlying the
„classical“ relational psychological contract of long-
term stable industrial-era qualified employment (job
security, training, and internal promotion against loy-
alty, reliability and personal sacrifices). The „chang-
ing“ and „new“ psychological contract in a flexible
world of work demonstrates a transition from rela-
tional psychological contracts based on employer reli-
ance to widespread acceptance of work arrangements
from which employer obligations for long-term em-
ployee security and welfare have mostly disappeared,
replaced by more short-term oriented transactional
cognitive models stressing employee self-reliance
(Blickle & Witzki, 2008; Rousseau, 2006). From a criti-
cal perspective, this „new“ form of psychological con-
tracts is nothing but the collective acknowledgement
that organizations tend not to live up to their prom-
ises. The normative power of the factual demands
accepting that extensive employer obligations reflect
„unrealistic“ expectations in the new world of work
(Culline & Dundon, 2006), and declaring as the „new
normal“ what used to be perceived by employees as
breaches under the „old deal“. In other words, breach
of psychological contracts in the interest of employers
and shareholder is interpreted as a „new type“ of psy-
chological contract, while normative employee expec-
tations based on „old“ contracts are de-legitimized and
invalidated (Bal & Hornung, 2019). Cumulative results
on the health-impairing effects of contract breach and
violation give an impression of the human costs of the
sweeping „haircut“ employers have applied to their
commitments, revealing inherent ideological bias, ele-
ments of wishful thinking, and (self-)deception in the
psychological contracts of employees.
The concept of idiosyncratic deals is both a logical
and ideological successor for the self-deconstructing
psychological contract (Hornung & Rousseau, 2017).
Focusing on individually negotiated work and em-
ployment conditions, idiosyncratic deals more directly
acknowledge diverging employee-employer interests
and the risk of notoriously unfulfilled organizational
obligations. Yet, this also opens up new ways for a
performance-based redistribution of formerly broad-
based employee benefits and inducement, stripped
from the impoverished „no frills“ employment rela-
tionships prescribed by neoliberal logics for the more
easily replaceable, flexibilized parts of the workforce.
Notably, similar dialectical processes regarding
the impact of interest-driven „objective“ structural
strains for the emergence and proliferation of new
ideological beliefs justifying these constraints and per-
petuating inequality, are described on a societal level
by Greene (2008). This author analyzes historical de-

Dialectics of workplace flexibility 77
velopments and functions of different ideologies of in-
dividualism in the United States from the post-civil war
reconstruction period until the present. He identifies
three individualistic ideologies necessary to normal-
ize inequality in their respective historical contexts:
1) Individualism as an ideology of self-willed wealth
or success in post-civil war period; 2) individualism as
complete self-reliance, since the first half of the 20th
century, and 3) individualism as an ideology of high
self-esteem, starting from the 1970s. Each relate to
structural societal strains in different historical phases,
such as lacking advancement opportunities, eroding
social support systems, inequality and exclusion (Put-
nam, 2001; Wacquant, 2009; Moscone, Tosetti & Vit-
tadini, 2016). Dominating different phases of societal
development, these ideologies serve to uphold valued
individual beliefs, while simultaneously moderating
expectations directed at society, normalizing auster-
ity and injustice, and promoting compliance, fulfilling
functions of system justification (Jost, 2019). Histori-
cally, every new form of individualism complements
the last in its ideological purpose. Ultimately, the cur-
rent ideological version of present-day individualism
is an amalgamation of all three. Those who are ex-
ploited, marginalized, and excluded under the regime
of neoliberal capitalism are indoctrinated to draw self-
esteem and pride from unmitigated exposure to socio-
economic insecurity and risks of recurring capitalist
crises – without posing demands or burdens on the in-
dividualized society around them (Greene, 2008). This
changing relationship between individual and society
complements, contextualizes, and thus helps to better
understand transitioning psychological relationships
between individuals and organizations – culminating
in the emergence of a paradox ideology of employee
self-reliance.
Research on individualistic ideologies in differ-
ent societal subsystems, gives an impression of the
cascading, mutually reinforcing structural, social,
and psychological processes underlying changes in
social attitudes and values, frames of references, and
belief systems (Jost et al., 2009). A resulting „new“
disillusionment recognizes work organizations as ab-
stract, amoral, and, essentially, „sociopathic“ systems,
creatively executing economic imperatives without
regard of the human costs and inherently lacking
scruples, conscience or remorse. Indeed, this criti-
cal realization increasingly seems to replace previous
more naïve and romanticizing conceptions of organi-
zations as anthropomorphized entities acting in co-
herent and socially responsible or paternalistic ways
(Bal & Hornung, 2019). This development has a posi-
tive side, as it implies overcoming faulty assumptions
and illusionary beliefs and recognizing social realities.
We believe that the described trends and trajectories
underscore the need for a more thorough under-
standing of contemporary employees in terms of the
sociological entreployee-proposition, that is, as quasi-
independent, self-managing „self-entrepreneurs“ of
their own labor power (Höge, 2011; Pongratz & Voß,
2003). Compatible with literatures on employability,
career self-management, and idiosyncratic deals, this
perspective on the „subjectification“ of work (Becke,
2017; Dettmers, Deci, Baeriswyl, Berset & Krause,
2016), includes a critical understanding of flexibility as
a new era of ideological coordination through indirect
and internalized control and compliance mechanisms
(Moldaschl & Voß, 2002). More research is needed on
the dialectical processes at the intersection of ideo-
logical indoctrination and psychological introjection,
identification, and integration (Deci et al., 2017), cul-
minating in formation of occupational and personal
identities (Miscenko & Day, 2016).
Flexibility as a dialectical concept
The previous two sections reflect the metaphorical
imaginary of the Janus-face of workplace flexibility, its
contradictory, paradox, and deceptive double charac-
ter. Theoretical discourses and practical examples of
an employee-oriented implementation of organization-
al practices, on the one hand, speak for the potential
of workplace flexibility to facilitate humanistic ideals
of self-determination, autonomy, psychological ap-
propriation or ownership, and personal development.
This positive image serves as an optimistic antipode to
insecure, erratic, and precarious working conditions
promoting psychological strain, alienation, impaired
mental health, and, ultimately, exclusion (Burchell
et al., 2002; Lengfeld & Kleiner, 2009; Pedaci, 2010).
Research and practice of workplace flexibility, on the
other hand, is indeed systemically permeated and in-
herently corrupted by neoliberal ideology, which, first
and foremost, serves the interests of employers, share-
holders, and management, routinely ignoring, misrep-
resenting, or counteracting the interests of employees
(Gouliquer, 2000). Questions regarding how these two
opposing dimensions are theoretically interrelated
and manifest in practice, have been attracting aca-
demic interests. Cañibano (2019) suggested that the
tension field between flexibility for the employer and
the employee can be approached as: a) the two ends
of a continuum (opposed, incompatible, „either/or“);
b) bipolar and dynamic (independent, fluctuating,
„not only/but also“); or c) a paradoxical relationship
(complex, ambivalent, „both/and“), where flexibility
functions as both employer inducement and employee
contribution. Drawing on the literature on organiza-
tional paradoxes and the Taoist symbol of the Yin and
Yang, this author elaborates on the complex properties
of the two forms flexibility, such as interdependence,

78 S. Hornung & T. Höge
ible firm“, where privileged core employee groups
enjoy the humanistic ideal, whereas peripheral em-
ployees bear the costs of the dark side of neoliberal
flexibility. Competition for better employment condi-
tions (or avoidance of job degrading) at the fault lines
between core and periphery and systematic exclusion
of lower performers – widely recommended manage-
ment practices (Allan et al., 1999; Archibald, 2009)
– introduce „dynamizing“ elements, metaphorically
turning this internal labor market into a „through-flow
reactor“ or „pressure cooker“.
A third dialectic of workplace flexibility is more
complex and dynamic. Involving a longer-term per-
spective, it assumes that neoliberal ideological work
practices indirectly advance their own antagonistic
„negations“, thus, potentially proliferating emergent
solutions and reconciliation of underlying tensions
(Farjoun, 2019). The classic example for this dialec-
tic on a macro-level is the social theory of historical
materialism regarding the creation and exploitation
of the working class by capital, progressing to a point
where a revolutionary movement would be inevitable
to relieve the structural tensions and energize the
transformation of society towards a new configuration
in the distribution of power over the productive forces
and surplus value (Kologlugil, 2015). Systems theory
has established non-linear emergent processes are
limitedly predictable and thus, at best, are subject to
theoretical speculation (Levins, 1998; Pratten, 2013).
Examples for such intertwined, dialectical processes
on a micro-level have been described for flexible work
practices, such as telecommunicating and part-time
work (Kossek & Lautsch, 2018; Kauhanen & Nätti,
2015). Another rather unlikely example can be found
in the current phenomenon of co-working spaces for
the self-employed. Indeed, some scholars have argued
that co-working spaces are a possibility for precarious
freelancers to overcome social isolation and develop
collaborative structures, build „new“ social capital and
share, bundle, and cooperatively exploit their resourc-
es (Butcher, 2016; Gandini, 2015; Gerdenitsch, Scheel,
Andorfer & Korunka, 2016). Born from necessity to sur-
vive economically under the neoliberal regime, such
new forms of work may open niches or „laboratories“
to develop a new „class consciousness“ of professionals
sharing similar constraints and interests – a potential
movement towards building „flexible“, collaborative,
self-managed, resource-saving, and, therefore, socially
responsible and productive new organizational struc-
tures and practices. These new organizational forms
frequently consist of and attract broadly qualified and
multi-skilled people, who are used to proactively stand
in for their interests, „hardened“ and disillusioned in
the daily neoliberal struggles. If coupled with specific
political backgrounds and value orientations, this new
generation of free associations of „independent labor-
inherent tensions, and potential complementarities
(cf. Putnam et al., 2014). In the following, we build on
the thinking of these scholars by emphasizing a dia-
lectical interpretation of flexibility and applying it to
the organizational level. Dialectical thinking is an ana-
lytic device with explanatory power beyond the con-
cept of paradox. Where paradox emphasizes inherent
contradictions and ambiguities, dialectics describe a
dynamic process of antagonistic tensions, „amalgam-
ating“ transformations and emergence of qualitatively
new phenomena (Farjoun, 2019; Levins, 1998; Put-
nam, Fairhurst & Banghart, 2016). This is expressed as
the dialectic tri-step of thesis, antithesis, and synthe-
sis, combined with the motions of negation, transfor-
mation (elevation to a higher level), and continuation
(preservation of lower-level properties) in the newly
emerging configuration.
Without making use of this full potential here,
in the following we will sketch out examples for pos-
sible forms of underlying dialectical relationships.
Three relevant cases are manifestations of workplace
flexibility as employee-oriented humanistic ideal and
employer-oriented neoliberal ideology in 1) different
organizations, 2) for different groups of employees
within the same organization, 3) as inseparably inter-
twined aspects of the same work and organizational
practices. The first is the case, when the degree of
humanistic and employee-oriented versus ideologi-
cally biased and employer-oriented practice of flex-
ibility is investigated as a function of the „ideology“
and culture of a specific organization. For example,
workplace flexibility in organizations with high levels
of structurally anchored democracy and employee-
ownership (e.g., self-governed worker co-operatives)
and a highly authentic socio-moral organizational cli-
mate (Weber et al., 2008) has another meaning than
in conventional hierarchical enterprises, let alone in
modern corporations led by a management dedicated
to maximize shareholder value. Essentially, this comes
down to genuine intention, commitment, and dedica-
tion to implementing and practicing employee-orient-
ed workplace flexibility, for instance, in the context of
democratic processes and humanistic or socially re-
sponsible management models (Alvesson & Willmott,
1992; Chiva, 2014; Melé, 2003; Weber et al., 2008).
The second form of dialectics is reflected by the
core-periphery model of organizational flexibility
(Atkinson, 1984). It differentiates employment qual-
ity between a skilled, well-paid, comparatively secure
core workforce segment with standard employment
contracts and high levels of job autonomy, from a pe-
ripheral workforce consisting of precarious workers
with atypical contracts and high insecurity (Kalleberg,
2003). Subject to further differentiation and segmenta-
tion, core and the peripheral workforce complement
each other as the functionally and numerically „flex-
ˇ

Dialectics of workplace flexibility 79
ers“ or social „entreployees“ may be able to strengthen
societal tendencies for a social-ecological transforma-
tion of society – or at least parts of it – by developing
alternatives for collaborative emancipation, individu-
ation, and solidarity in opposition to the economic
excesses of neoliberal ideology (Kologlugil, 2015).
Of course, this is a very optimistic and maybe overly
hopeful perspective. It is equally plausible (and maybe
more likely) that, in reality, co-working spaces become
new arenas for increased competition and instrumen-
tality masked by inauthentic and opportunistic quasi-
collaboration, cloaked in a rhetoric of solidarity. This
unresolved tension illustrates the non-deterministic,
ambivalent, and cautionary nature of dialectical think-
ing that we are advocating here. Future developments
and research need to answer this question empirically
by analyzing the conditions under which flexibility-
oriented practices originally initiated by neoliberal
economic interests can indeed be transformed from
within to produce counteracting, liberating and eman-
cipatory effects – embodied in dialectical synthesis.
Following the „individualistic turn“ in work psychol-
ogy from the collective to the individual level, which,
reflects a manifestation of the ideology of flexibility by
itself, this includes potentials for proactive behavior
as „micro-emancipatory“ bottom-up actions of indi-
viduals taking initiative and using agency in vaguely
defined work situations. While worthwhile and impor-
tant, exploring these possibilities should not lead to
assuming that all employees necessarily have access
to, can adequately use, or, eventually, can really profit
from such personal flexibility resources.
Abandoning or reclaiming flexibility?
Recognizing its conceptual fuzziness and ideological
contaminations, the question arises whether „work-
place flexibility“ continues to be a useful scientific
concept. In our view, research on workplace flex-
ibility can make a relevant contribution, only if it not
primarily serves the interests of organizations, but
first and foremost, benefits individuals and society.
This requires a critical perspective, which includes
identifying, calling attention to, analyzing, and chal-
lenging observed dysfunctional, psychopathological,
or socially corrosive trends – instead of conveniently
downplaying or ignoring them. On the societal level,
hegemony of neoliberal ideology and associated social
inequality, projection of societal risks on individuals,
and trends towards de-facto de-democratization and
„de-civilization“, warrant loud, clear, and tireless calls
for social reform (Harvey, 2005; LaMothe, 2016). Scru-
tiny on the organizational level deserve, among others,
HR and work systems promoting or demanding unsus-
tainably high and/or steadily increasing performance,
competition among coworkers, and pressure to adapt
to temporal or functional flexibility requirements
(Becke, 2017; Dettmers et al., 2016). Such practices
are enabled and reinforced by rising social tolerance
for inequality and erosion of institutional protections
for employees (Lengfeld & Kleiner, 2009; Wacquant,
2009). Based on the critique of adverse human-made
„environmental“ conditions, applied psychological re-
search should strive for insights that are relevant, use-
ful, and beneficial for all its stakeholders. Certainly,
this refers not only to those profiting from or in charge
of managing organizations, but to all individuals navi-
gating the „brave new world of work“ – faced with
pressures and conditions requiring them to be flexible,
proactive, adaptive, and self-reliant in managing their
own careers and quality of working life (Höge, 2011).
Research on employee-oriented aspects of workplace
flexibility holds the promise of generating such recom-
mendations. On the one hand, this pertains to princi-
ples and practices of socially responsible or humanis-
tic management; on the other hand, to healthy, ethical,
and constructive cognitive and behavioral strategies for
approaching work, pursuing careers, and developing
positive occupational identities in the era of flexibility.
Of relevance here, among others, is the literature on
proactive organizational behavior, comprising self-ini-
tiated and unauthorized acts of job crafting and rene-
gotiation of work and employment conditions through
idiosyncratic deals (Grant & Ashford, 2008; Hornung et
al., 2008, 2018). Illustrating tensions of interests at the
individual level, as well as ideological contamination,
however, proactive work behavior is also considered a
dimension of job performance. Research on the posi-
tive aspects of task or functional flexibility, thus, runs a
thin line between employee self-actualization and self-
exploitation, and must not underestimate adversity,
competition, and pressure in contemporary work situ-
ations. Proactive improvements of the work situation
may be difficult to distinguish from adaptive coping ef-
forts to counteract alienating or health-impairing con-
ditions, which, in the longer term, possibly converge
with dysfunctional or unsustainable self-endangering
coping strategies, partly based on pressure-driven
over-engagement (Hornung et al., 2017). This corre-
sponds with our argument that behavior is a limitedly
useful category of analysis without knowledge of the
underlying motivating, constraining, and influencing
contextual and psychological processes.
The dialectics of the subjectification of work un-
der regimes of workplace flexibility would be incom-
pletely represented without the opportunities for self-
actualization, opened up by changing organizational
structures and practices. Shared assumptions regard-
ing inherent human tendencies towards growth, altru-
ism, and self-determination, particularly under condi-
tions of adversity, are found in humanistic, existential,
ˇ

80 S. Hornung & T. Höge
and critical streams of psychology (Teo, 2015). These
traditions provide a basis for evoking, positioning, and
promoting humanistic values as a backdrop of employ-
ee-oriented forms of flexibility and to counteract so-
cially corrosive neoliberal antipodes of individualism,
competition, and instrumentality. On the positive or
utopian side, this includes a vision, courage, and com-
mitment to continuing to explore emerging dialectic
potentials for individuation, solidarity, and emancipa-
tion at work.
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Dialectics of workplace flexibility 83
Correspondence to:
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Severin Hornung, MSc
University of Innsbruck
Institute of Psychology
Maximilianstraße 2
A-6020 Innsbruck
Severin.Hornung@uibk.ac.at
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Revisioning employees as active crafters of their
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