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In the five years that have elapsed since Sloane reported on the changing patterns of working hours in Britain, the rate of change has increased and the pattern of change has become more complex. This paper sets out to update thinking about patterns of change, proposes a research model and poses a number of research issues. Since terminology can be confusing, we start with some definitions.

Recent experiments with changes in work week structure from ‘rigid’ to ‘flexible’ have alerted employers and employees to the possibility of varying existing hours arrangements. The decision to change (or not to change) is often based on inadequate consideration of the consequences and an incomplete identification and analysis of all the available alternatives. Different degrees and forms of ‘flexibility’ may be appropriate for different work situations. The decision‐maker must appraise the work situations under his control and determine from the alternatives available which particular structure(s) are most suitable. To this end it is necessary, firstly, to conceptualize about the major variables in work week structures and then to develop a model which will allow the work situation characteristics to be ‘matched’ with a suitable work week structure. Research carried out in the Department of Management Studies at Loughborough University indicates that a ‘contingency’ model seems most appropriate.

The application of flexibility to shift systems of working has generally been limited to individual arrangements between ‘opposite numbers’ on other shifts. This article describes a successful experiment to design and implement a flexible system that greatly extends the discretion accorded to operatives on shiftwork in their overall use of time. The scheme appears to be unique in that over 1,500 production workers are involved in operating a scheme that was largely designed by themselves.

From its origins in West Germany in the late sixties ‘flexitime’ has spread in various forms across Europe, The United States and the Western World generally. A number of organisations have emerged to provide time recording equipment for monitoring flexitime systems, their rapid growth in the seventies bears witness to the fertile conditions for flexitime which evidently existed during that period. In the U.K. applications of flexitime have been in Insurance, Banking, the Civil Service and Local Government as well as retailing and manufacturing.

At regular intervals over the past two decades, management has been presented with various attractively packaged techniques, offered as the panaceas to cure hitherto perennial managerial problems. Although these “cure‐alls” may differ greatly (cf. MBO and productivity bargaining) they tend to have a common characteristic, that is, they claim that advantages will result for all the parties involved, and, often, that they will produce results in every organisation in which they are properly applied and given a chance to work. The experience that, in practice, some of the benefits claimed by the different groups involved are incompatible, or that some are more difficult to bring about than anticipated, or that the supposedly “universal” panacea “just does not work in our company”, does not seem to inhibit the discovery of new panaceas to replace or supplement the old.

Organisational hours systems are a major feature of the overall web of controls and influences which are applied to employees. For this reason alone it is surprising how little attention has been focused on them relative to other influence mechanisms, such as pay, job design, appraisal systems, budgets and so on. Yet when we consider that, with the arguable exception of pay, hours systems have the most intrusive effect on the employee's total life pattern, their neglect as a field of study is all the more disconcerting.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The debate surrounding flexible working hours or “flexitime” has progressed from exploratory summaries of its “advantages” and “disadvantages” for employees and companies to more advanced studies of the degrees and forms of flexibility available and the factors which influence their suitability in a managerial sense.

The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

Research into flexible hours control systems has been largely confined to analyses of the impact of flexitime. This article argues that this aspect of management control is too important to be examined in simplistic and piecemeal fashion. There are a wide variety of potential hours control systems, each with its own particular characteristics and range of application. The subject of hours control systems is introduced by developing a theoretical framework. It is then explored by describing the results of a survey of 228 companies. This leads to some modifications to the framework and some conclusions which have clear implications for management.