"That the 1980s were a decade of significant economic change is not in any doubt. However, how best to interpret these changes has become a source of much controversy. Three related concepts have recently emerged around which there has been a dramatic crystallization: Fordism, post-Fordism, and, supposedly linking the two, various manifestations of economic flexibility. There has been, it is suggested, a profound change in the labor process towards the "flexible worker" and in the labour market towards a "flexible workforce". " "Three approaches to explain these changes are especially important and provide the major focus for this book: Marxist regulation theory; the notion of flexible specialization associated with the "new" institutional economics; and the model of the flexible firm derived from the managerialist literature. In the book, the diverse claims made by these three approaches are subject to empirical and theoretical investigation and their wider implications are examined in relation to emerging patterns of work in advanced societies. "--Jacket.