The Managerial Prerogative and the Employee's Obligation to Work : Comparative Perspectives on Functional Flexibility

The aim of this article is to analyse the legal regulation of the managerial prerogative (especially the employer's right to direct and allocate work) and how it relates to the employee's obligation to work in Swedish, English and German law in the light of the increasing flexibilisation of working life. The ongoing flexibilisation of working life is often described as an increase in adaptability and allocative flexibility and as a shift from traditional to atypical employment. The main focus of this article is functional flexibility, which is a matter of adaptability within permanent employment relationships and aims at varying the content of work, and not, as often is the case, atypical employment and numerical flexibility. This article presents a legal dogmatic and comparative analysis of the employer's right to direct and allocate work, the employee's obligation to work and variation in the employee's obligation to work in Swedish, English and German law. Furthermore, the material is subjected to a functional flexibility analysis, including a general discussion on the future developments of the managerial prerogative