Suchergebnisse

From union renewal to the service labor process -- The making of big-box retail -- The not-so-hidden abode: work organization at Macy's and Target -- Carrots, sticks, and workers: the relations of employment -- Toward a regime of contingent control -- Class consciousness on the sales floor? -- The promise of service worker organizing -- A note on class consciousness

The article discusses practical experiences with establishing conditions for employee participation in retailing. Social dialogue and human resource management perspectives frame the discussion. These are two different systems for organizing relations between employers and employees. Companies that do not have either are called 'bleak houses'. There are many 'bleak houses' in retailing, and work conditions leave much to be desired. This increases transaction costs and has adverse effects on work climate and productivity. An innovative approach to employee participation was tried out through a series of R&D projects in a Norwegian retail chain. The research strategy was based on a participatory approach called 'democratic dialogue'.

In a field experiment with a retail chain (1,300 employees, 193 shops), randomly selected sales teams received a bonus. The bonus increases both sales and number of customers dealt with by 3 percent. Each dollar spent on the bonus generates $3.80 in sales, and $2.10 in profit. Wages increase by 2.2 percent while inequality rises only moderately. The analysis suggests effort complementarities to be important, and the effectiveness of peer pressure in overcoming free-riding to be limited. After rolling out the bonus scheme, the performance of the treatment and control shops converges, suggesting long-term stability of the treatment effect. (JEL D22, J31, J33, L25, L81, M53, M54)

We measure the effects of chain economies, business stealing, and heterogeneous firms' comparative advantages in the discount retail industry. Traditional entry models are ill suited for this high‐dimensional problem of strategic interaction. Building upon recently developed profit inequality techniques, our model admits any number of potential rivals and stores per location, an endogenous distribution network, and unobserved (to the econometrician) location attributes that may cause firms to cluster their stores. In an application, we find that Wal‐Mart benefits most from local chain economies, whereas Target shows a greater ability to respond to rival competition. Kmart exhibits neither of these strengths. We explore these results with counterfactual simulations highlighting these offsetting effects and find that local chain economies play an important role in securing Wal‐Mart's industry leader status.

In recent years, the concept of corporate social responsibility has become increasingly well-known to society and individual organizations. Therefore, it is becoming more and more important to raise awareness and perception of this concept, as well as to promote its implementation in practice. Based on a questionnaire survey, data analysis was conducted to find out how consumers perceive various CSR activities of a specific retail chain. The research sample consisted of 129 respondents. The data was statistically processed and tested using confidence interval and chi-square. It was found that 52 % of the respondents understood the concept of CSR. The most familiar activity to the respondents within the CSR concept in a particular chain include the fight against food waste, recycling, and waste recovery, and promotion of a healthy lifestyle. About 65.4 % of the respondents believe that CSR activities mainly benefit the retail chain and another 14 % of the respondents are almost sure that the retail chain is engaged in this concept mainly for profit. However, the performed tests did not reveal any relationship between the perception of CSR activities and the age, education, gender, and salary of the respondents. It was also found that 56.6 % of the respondents did not have sufficient information about CSR. Finally, it can be concluded that this concept is perceived positively by the respondents, they consider it meaningful and are willing to pay more for a product where part of the profit goes to the needy. The research results thus outline directions and areas for possible improvement and continuous monitoring of the perception of this concept.

Sukhpal Singh and Naresh Singla: Fresh Food Retail Chains in India: Organisation and Impacts, Allied, New Delhi, 2011