One Store, Two Employment Systems: Core, Periphery and Flexibility in China's Retail Sector
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2008.00695.x |
| Author | Qihai Huang,Jos Gamble |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
One Store, Two Employment Systems:
Core, Periphery and Flexibility in
China’s Retail Sector
Jos Gamble and Qihai Huang
Abstract
Research on ‘flexible’ or ‘contingent work’, derived primarily from manufactur-
ing and production contexts in Western settings, has often been theorized in terms
of a core-periphery model. Based upon ethnographic research on vendor repre-
sentatives and regular store employees conducted at a multinational retail firm in
China, we indicate that this model is insufficient to capture the complexity of
employment arrangements in this context. This article delineates the coexistence
of two employment systems and a quadrilateral relationship in which workers’
interests sometimes overlap but often compete. Our research also indicates that
institutional arrangements in China significantly affect the strategies that are
open to firms and the consequent structure of employment relations.
1. Introduction
Economic and social economic changes have put organizations under pres-
sure to increase flexibility in their employment system (Kalleberg 2003).
Consequently, since the early 1980s, contingent work arrangements have
become more widespread (Hakim 1990; Smith 1994; Voudouris 2004; Walsh
2007). An extensive literature on this subject in the West focuses on what is
referred to as ‘flexible’ or ‘contingent work’ (e.g. Atkinson 1984; Cappelli and
Neumark 2004; Geary 1992; Kalleberg 2001), with notions of ‘core’ and
‘peripheral’ labour as a central feature of discussion. However, although
there are exceptions (e.g. Coyle-Shapiro and Kessler 2002; Deery and Walsh
2002; Smith 1994; Walsh 1990; Walsh and Deery 1999), most analyses on
flexibility derive from manufacturing and production settings, fewer still
focus on the retail sector (Baret et al. 2000; Nätti 1990; Wong 2001). This
imbalance may distort our understanding of flexibility. When workers
Jos Gamble is at the School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London. Qihai
Huang is at the Business School, Manchester Metropolitan University.
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2008.00695.x
47:1 March 2009 0007–1080 pp. 1–26
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2008. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
produce services or work on people, we might anticipate finding different
organizational forms of flexibility, as well as different outcomes to those
found in production settings (Smith 1997).
The retail sector plays an increasingly important role in economies. Despite
this, retail sector human resource management remains a rather neglected area
(Samli and Ongan 1996). Moreover, studies on contingent labour in retailing
have usually focused on part-time work. Equally, little research on flexibility
and labour market segmentation has been conducted in non-Western contexts
(Kalleberg 2003), apart from Japan (e.g. Gadrey et al. 2001), even though
increasing use of contingent labour appears to be a global trend with examples
from locations such as Hong Kong (Wong 2001) and South Korea (Lee and
Frenkel 2004). In China, dramatic changes to organization and industry are
taking place that have major implications for work (Morris 2004), with a
transition from relatively fixed and stable labour markets to much greater flux
and heterogeneity (Gamble and Huang 2008). Scant attention, though, has
been paid to the presence of flexible employment arrangements in this context.
This article aims to contribute to the literature through analysing employ-
ment arrangements in a foreign-invested retail firm in China. In the first
place, we document and analyse a form of flexible labour organization — the
employment of vendor representatives — that has been neglected in the
literature. The form delineated involves two employment systems existing
side-by-side in which co-workers can have both overlapping and competing
interests. We suggest that the core-periphery model is insufficient to capture
the complexity of employment arrangements in this context. Our research
also indicates that institutional arrangements in China, including entrenched
business practice, lack of consumer safeguards and retailers’ weakness vis-à-
vis suppliers, have a major impact on the strategies available to firms and the
consequent structure of firm-level employment relations. This evidence indi-
cates that prevailing models overemphasize the extent of managerial discre-
tion with regard to flexible workplaces.
The article is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces China’s retail
sector and its labour organization. This is followed by a review of the relevant
literature on contingent labour in Section 3. After outlining the research
method in Section 4, we introduce the role and nature of vendor representa-
tives in Section 5 and compare them with the store’s own regular employees
in Section 6. Subsequently, in Section 7, we assess the consequences of the
coexistence of these two groups of employees. Section 8 assesses the core-
periphery model while Section 9 discusses theoretical and practical implica-
tions of such employment arrangements and provides our analysis to account
for the form they take.
2. Retail sector labour in China
Between 1980 and 2005, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) increased by
an average of 9.7 per cent per annum. By 2004, measured on a purchasing
2British Journal of Industrial Relations
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2008.
To continue reading
Request your trial