An entropy-based measurement of working time flexibility

Working time flexibility is of major concern to companies, and must be established by reaching arrangements with workers. Comparing flexibility arrangements is far from easy. Measures of flexibility that assume a probability distribution Of future demand are not really measuring flexibility, but rather risk. We define a space of states made up of possible working hours over several periods, and apply three measures of flexibility to it: the proportion of feasible states, the average cost and a new entropy-based measure of flexibility (EMF). The EMF is based on Shannon's entropy. We propose the use of three measures simultaneously for comparing the flexibility provided by a working time arrangement. Two examples are given: one that assesses the flexibility generated by using time accounts and overtime in a working time accounts (WTAs) modality, and one that compares the WTAs and hiring and firing (H&F) modalities. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.