Re-organizing Flexibility and the Employment Standards Act in Ontario

For over two decades, increasing the flexibility of firms has been viewed as a key element of improved business performance, and is often a major goal of change management programs. This paper examines what 'increasing flexibility' means in the context of change management, and focuses specifically on the effectiveness of legislative changes promoting it. We begin by reviewing the literature on flexibility, which leads to a more differentiated understanding of the term. We then show how flexibility in one dimension often leads to inflexibility in another. Consequently, we argue that it is better to talk about 'reorganizing' rather than 'increasing' flexibility. We then use this expanded understanding of flexibility to analyze the recent Employment Standards Act in Ontario, as a case study of one government's initiative to boost the flexibility of firms in its jurisdiction. We conclude that the Act will not uniformly increase flexibility across the province. However, if firms start to think in terms of reorganizing flexibility rather than simply increasing it, they are likely to be more successful in improving their economic performance.