This paper draws together and provides further analysis of two research projects commissioned by the Department of Employment, with a focus on employers' labour use strategies in Britain. It seeks to place on a firmer statistical basis arguments about the presence and growth of the ‘flexible firm’, and it draws also on case‐study data to explore some of the issues relating to flexibility and strategy. Our conclusions are that there has been a marked absence of strategy in this area, and reasons for this are explored, as are the implications for gender and segmentation in the labour market.

Collaborative relationships between firms have been growing in importance,

This paper examines international practices that measure firm‐level investments into intangible capital. The issues motivating the paper are the need for a standardised framework for measuring intangible capital and the possibility for standardised applications of these measures into the future. The paper analyses the differences and problems associated with the properties of the “official” (accounting) and “non‐official” measurement approaches. We propose that the way to a standardised, more comparable approach to measuring intangible capital is to employ a back‐to‐basics “costs” approach which classifies investments in intangible capital as assets based on management intent at the time.