고용유연화의 기능적 유연성과 수량적 유연성의 관계에 관한 연구

Companies in Korea recently began to increase aggressively the labor flexibility by habitual restructuring to respond with market competition. Consequently, the types of labor contracts are diversified and the numbers of contingent workers including contract workers, part-timers, and temporary workers rapidly increased in recent years. The Bureau of Statistics reports the ratio of contingent workers in Korea are more than half of the workers in 2002 although the Korean Employers Federation (KEF) argued that the percentage of contingent workers in practical sense are about 18 percent. The increase of contingent workers, however, does not necessarily mean the improvement of companies’s competitiveness. The enhanced labor flexibility may improve the company’s competitiveness if the functional flexibility of regular workers is increased while the numerical flexibility of contingent workers is decreased. Its competitiveness, however, may also be improved if the functional flexibility of regular workers is increased and if the numerical flexibility of contingent workers is increased as a buffer to adjust unexpected labor demands. The latter case, however, may increase the social cost because this leads dual labor market at the national level. Third possibility is the loss of companies’ competitiveness due to the overuse of contingent workers without the improved functional flexibility of regular workers. These arguments lead the question of this paper to check the relationship between the functional and the numerical flexibilities in Korean companies. If the relationship is positive, then the effect of the relationship may increase the companies’ competitiveness although the social cost exists due to the dual labor market system. If the relationship is negative, two interpretations are available. The first interpretation is that the increase in functional flexibility of regular employees reduces the demand for contingent workers. This keeps the competitiveness for the company and reduces the cost to the society due to the increased contingent workers. The second interpretation is the decrease in functional flexibility of regular workers and the increase in numerical flexibility of contingent workers. This case is bad for both the company and the society. Additionally, the moderate effects of compensation cost and labor union on the relationship are hypothesized. To analyze the relationship between the functional and the numerical flexibilities of labor in Korean companies, the second year data of Enterprise Panel Data surveyed annually by Korea Labor Institute was used. The second year data were collected in between April and June in 2003. The number of surveyed companies were 2,275 and 2,005 questionnaires were returned from human resource managers, 2,008 from industrial relations managers, and 1,175 from workers representatives. Simple statistics for the sample are as follows. The size of surveyed companies are: 25.1% in less than 50 employees, 19.6% in 50-99 employees, 37.2% in 100-299 employees, and 18.0% in more than 300 employees. More than half of the companies are in mining and manufacturing industries, and 11.4% in transportation and telecommunications, and 10.6% in wholesale and lodging industries. Fifty-nine percent of companies are not unionized while 35.4% of companies have a union at the plant level and 5.2% at the company level. About 20% of companies are subcontracted companies, 24.3% of them are subcontracting companies, and 56.2% of companies do not have subcontract relationship. The two dependent variables to measure the numerical flexibility are a dummy variable for either using contingent workers or adjusting the number of regular workers, and the ratio of contingent workers to total number of workers. The independent variable to measure the functional flexibility is a composite index variable of 11 related variables. They include skill development level, job rotation, and workplace participation information among others. These variables are standardized and merged into one variable. The Cronbach-alpha of 11 variables was 0.65. The compensation cost was measured by merging 4 variables: relative wage, and benefits level within the same industry, the average of managers’ salaries, and the average of workers’ wages. The union dummy variable was coded as one if either the surveyed company or plant is unionized. The control variables include the number of years since the company was established, the number of workers, the dummy variables for subcontracted company and subcontracting company, the pressure for short-term profit, the dummy for a burden of high compensation cost, the ratio of export to total sales. Other control variables include the dummy variable for severe market competition situation, the market share ratio, the use of market differentiation strategy. Company governance structure was also controlled as a dummy variable coded as one if the company was managed by the owner and the additional variable of the ratio of stocks owned by foreign investors. Finally, 6 industry dummy variables were controlled. The first hypothesis was not supported by the empirical results. The functional flexibility variable was not significant in determining either the use of contingent workers or the adjustment of regular workers. A few other regression models using different control variables showed no effect. The second hypothesis on the moderate effect of compensation cost to the use of contingent workers was partially supported. The compensation cost increases the use of contingent workers but do not change the numerical adjustment of regular workers. While the interaction variable of functional flexibility and compensation cost was significant only in the numerical adjustment of regular workers model but neither of two variables is statistically significant. The third hypothesis on the moderate effect of union was partially significant in the ratio of contingent workers model because the functional flexibility variable was not significant in the model. The result of this study is similar to the previous studies based on the fact that the relationship has been argued as mixed and no causality was clearly defined yet. One implication based on the analysis is the increased functional flexibility by regular workers possibly will enhance both the company’s competitiveness with overusing contingent workers and eventually the social integration by reducing the problem of insider-outsider issues in the labor market. The other implication is the company may have the incentive of increasing numerical flexibility if the market competition or the pressure for short-term profits increases. The following studies on the relationship, however, are required to confirm the implications suggested in this study.