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Multinational Retailers in China: Proliferating ‘McJobs’ or Developing Skills?

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  • Jos Gamble

Abstract

abstract Much has been written on the nature of skills and the extent to which there is increased skills development or a deskilling of workers in modern workplaces. This paper broadens the debate and explores these issues in the novel context of UK‐ and Japanese‐ invested retailers' operations in China. Data derived from over two hundred interviews at twelve retail stores in six Chinese cities and questionnaires completed by almost eight hundred employees elicited contextualized accounts of interactive service workers' own perceptions of their training and skills development. It was found that these firms made a substantial contribution to skills development, fostered and enhanced both directly by company training and also through experiential workplace‐based learning. It might be, however, that this constitutes an essential but ‘one‐off’ increase in skills in transitional economies such as that of China.

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  • Jos Gamble, 2006. "Multinational Retailers in China: Proliferating ‘McJobs’ or Developing Skills?," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(7), pages 1463-1490, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jomstd:v:43:y:2006:i:7:p:1463-1490
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2006.00622.x
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    Cited by:

    1. Chaney, Isabella & Gamble, Jos, 2008. "Retail store ownership influences on Chinese consumers," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 170-183, April.
    2. Baum, Tom, 2012. "Working the skies: Changing representations of gendered work in the airline industry, 1930–2011," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 1185-1194.
    3. Jos Gamble, 2007. "The rhetoric of the consumer and customer control in China," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 21(1), pages 7-25, March.
    4. Jos Gamble, 2010. "Transferring Organizational Practices and the Dynamics of Hybridization: Japanese Retail Multinationals in China," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(4), pages 705-732, June.
    5. Jos Gamble & Qihai Huang, 2009. "One Store, Two Employment Systems: Core, Periphery and Flexibility in China's Retail Sector," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 47(1), pages 1-26, March.

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