Redeployment and Competitive Strategy

The aim of the paper is to demonstrate and explain the importance of redeployment as a HRM policy. The literature and empirical work on labour flexibility identifies three types of labour flexibility. The principal writers associated with this approach claim that the numerical/functional/financial distinction is one which explains virtually all the important dimensions of innovation in manpower management in Britain in recent years. (Atkinson 1985(b), p. 26). This paper will suggest that there is a fourth type of labour flexibility, that is redeployment which is defined as spatial or geographical flexibility or flexibility of place. Redeployment is ignored in the HRM and labour flexibility literature, but the empirical results reported in this paper suggest that it is both widespread and seen by many managers as an essential link between their HRM policies and their competitive strategies.