Despite the interest in the issue of labour market flexibility, there is markedly
little research attempting to measure, let alone evaluate, the extent to which
flexible labour arrangements have penetrated labour relations in the UK and
elsewhere. One of the implications of this is that little is known about the
specific forms that labour market flexibility takes across and within each country.
Given this, it comes as little surprise that the discussion about the link between
globalization and flexibility has remained largely theoretical, with only a few
references to usually incidental anecdotal evidence. This article exploits a unique
set of labour market flexibility indicators that have been developed at the regional
level for the UK over the period 1979-98 and examines empirically the relationship
between globalization and flexibility. Through a spatial-temporal exploratory
analysis, significant patterns of geographical and functional specialization (in
levels and types of flexibility) are identified and then related to local structural
factors and demand conditions and to global influences. Global forces are found to
have played a significant role for the patterns observed. The implications of this
finding are discussed in the concluding section.
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