Multinational Retailers and Consumers in China: Transferring Organizational Practices from the United Kingdom and Japan

270 Pages·2011·2.195 MB·English

by  Jos Gamble (auth.)

Multinational Retailers and
Consumers in China
Transferring Organizational Practices from
the United Kingdom and Japan
Jos Gamble
Consumption and Public Life
Series Editors: Frank Trentmann and Richard Wilk
Titles include:
Mark Bevir and Frank Trentmann (editors)
GOVERNANCE, CITIZENS AND CONSUMERS
Agency and Resistance in Contemporary Politics
Magnus Boström and Mikael Klintman
ECO-STANDARDS, PRODUCT LABELLING AND GREEN CONSUMERISM
Jacqueline Botterill
CONSUMER CULTURE AND PERSONAL FINANCE
Money Goes to Market
Daniel Thomas Cook (editor)
LIVED EXPERIENCES OF PUBLIC CONSUMPTION
Encounters with Value in Marketplaces on Five Continents
Nick Couldry, Sonia Livingstone and Tim Markham
MEDIA CONSUMPTION AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
Beyond the Presumption of Attention
Anne Cronin
ADVERTISING, COMMERCIAL SPACES AND THE URBAN
Jos Gamble
MULTINATIONAL RETAILERS AND CONSUMERS IN CHINA
Transferring Organizational Practices from the United Kingdom and Japan
Stephen Kline
GLOBESITY, FOOD MARKETING AND FAMILY LIFESTYLES
Amy E. Randall
THE SOVIET DREAM WORLD OF RETAIL TRADE AND CONSUMPTION IN THE
1930s
Roberta Sassatelli
FITNESS CULTURE
Gyms and the Commercialisation of Discipline and Fun
Kate Soper, Martin Ryle and Lyn Thomas (editors)
THE POLITICS AND PLEASURES OF SHOPPING DIFFERENTLY
Better than Shopping
Kate Soper and Frank Trentmann (editors)
CITIZENSHIP AND CONSUMPTION
Lyn Thomas (editor)
RELIGION, CONSUMERISM AND SUSTAINABILITY
Paradise Lost?
Harold Wilhite
CONSUMPTION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE
A View from South India
Consumption and Public Life
Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–4039–9983–2 Hardback 978–1–4039–9984–9 Paperback
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Multinational Retailers
and Consumers in China
Transferring Organizational Practices from
the United Kingdom and Japan
Jos Gamble
Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
© Jos Gamble 2011
Chapters 5 & 8 © Jos Gamble & Qihai Huang 2011
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-54552-6
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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registered in England, company number785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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ISBN 978-1-349-36105-2 ISBN 978-0-230-31700-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230317000
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gamble, Jos, 1959–
Multinational retailers and consumers in China : transferring
organizational practices from the United Kingdom and Japan / Jos Gamble.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Retail trade–China–Management. 2. Corporations, Japanese–
China–Personnel management. 3. Corporations, British–China–Personnel
management. 4. Personnel management–China. 5. Consumer
satisfaction–China. 6. Organizational learning–China. I. Title.
HF5429.6.C5G36 2011
658.8′70951–dc22 2011011826
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
Contents
List of Tables vi
List of Images vii
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xi
Notes on the Contributors xii
1 Introduction 1
2 China’s Retail Sector in Context 18
3 Transferring Human Resource Practices from the 32
United Kingdom to China
4 Shopfloor Perceptions of Employment Practices at 53
UK-Store in China
5 Transferring Organizational Practices: A Diachronic 83
Perspective from China
with Qihai Huang
6 Transferring Organizational Practices and the 107
Dynamics of Hybridization: Japanese Retail
Multinationals in China
7 Multinational Retailers in China: Proliferating 141
‘McJobs’ or Developing Skills?
8 One Store, Two Employment Systems: Core, 173
Periphery and Flexibility in China’s Retail Sector
with Qihai Huang
9 The Rhetoric of the Consumer and Customer 196
Control in China
10 Concluding Comments 220
References 229
Index 249
v
List of Tables
1.1 Summary of main research in China 10
3.1 HRM practices transferred from UK to China 42
3.2 Grading structure in UK-Store 49
4.1 Contrasts between UK-Store and state owned store 60
‘State-Co’: Extent of consultation with employees
4.2 Contrasts between state owned enterprises and 61
UK-Store: Human resource management regimes
4.3 Contrasts between UK-Store and state owned store 62
‘State-Co’: Employee satisfaction
4.4 Contrasts between UK-Store and state owned store 63
‘State-Co’: Employee commitment to the company
4.5 Contrasts between UK-Store and state owned store 65
‘State-Co’: Job security
4.6 Contrasts between UK-Store and state owned store 66
‘State-Co’: Work effort and job security
4.7 Contrasts between UK-Store and state owned store 67
‘State-Co’: Correlation between job security and work
effort
4.8 Contrasts between UK-Store and state owned store 70
‘State-Co’: Employee satisfaction levels
5.1 Demographic profile of staff surveyed 88
5.2 Comparison of consultation at Shanghai UK-Store 95
and Beijing UK-Store, ‘NewStore’
5.3 Comparison of consultation at Beijing UK-Store, 96
‘NewStore’, and Beijing state owned store, ‘State Store’
5.4 Work pressure and job security compared: Shanghai 99
UK-Store and Beijing ‘NewStore’ compared
5.5 Work pressure and job security compared: Beijing MNC 99
(‘NewStore’) and Beijing state owned store, ‘State Store’
6.1 Summary of Japanese firms’ parent and host country 119
stores’ practices
7.1 Training received at UK-Stores in UK and China 156
7.2 Learning of new knowledge at retail firms in China 157
7.3 Encouragement to learn new skills 157
7.4 Learning of new knowledge: Sales assistants, checkout 159
and warehouse staff
7.5 Transferability of skills 163
8.1 Comparison of store employees and vendor representatives 180
vi
List of Images
1) Japanese Owned Store – Front Entrance 138
2) Japanese Owned Store – Workers’ Entrance 138
3) Bowing Practice Before the Store Opens 139
4) Listening to the Japanese Store Manager’s Morning 139
Message
5) Store Opening Time 140
6) State Owned Store Counter 217
7) Demonstration – Say ‘No’ to Japanese Products 217
8) Each Employee Brings Their Own Water Bottle to Work 218
9) Counting Out the Customer’s Change 218
10) Turning the Store into Private Space 219
11) Training Employees 219
vii
Preface
I was fortunate to travel independently in China for two months in 1984
and again for six weeks in 1985. These journeys inspired my desire
to understand more about this country and its people. Later, I spent
two years from 1988–90, studying Chinese language and literature at
Fudan University in Shanghai. This was followed by a further 15 months
at Tongji University, also in Shanghai, from 1992–3, while undertaking
field research for my PhD at the University of London’s School of
Oriental and African Studies.
I recall my friend Luo Meilun who was born a citizen of the Qing
Empire. Listening to his recollections of how, as a young boy, he had
learnt two of the Confucian classics by heart and his queue was cut off
following the downfall of the Manchu dynasty, they seemed to come
from a scarcely imaginable, vanished world. Now, when I reflect on my
early visits to China, it is easy to feel that they too belong to another
world. In the 1980s and early 1990s, even the once ‘modern’ and cosmo-
politan city of Shanghai had few new buildings, there was not much
evidence of multinational companies and few imported products were
available. Shops and restaurants closed early and store assistants rarely
had any interest in selling you the products they oversaw. As a student
at Fudan, the university needed to issue a ration coupon to allow me
to buy the bicycle on which I explored every part of the city, along
with postage stamp sized coupons to buy rice that small restaurants
sometimes still required.
In 2010, Shanghai, like many other parts of China, is a very different
place. Two decades ago, even China’s largest cities ambled along at a
steady but leisurely pace. Now, in the last few days, reports come in
that the size of China’s economy has overtaken that of Japan, making
it second only to the United States. Many of the changes that have
taken place in the country over the last two decades are visible in its
retail sector. The influx and spread of multinational retail firms became
possible due to China’s broader social, economic and political changes.
At the same time, their arrival not only reflects these changes, but
also affects their course and direction. Understanding and analys-
ing the processes at work in these multinationals, and especially the
transfer of their organizational practices, is the overarching theme of
this book.
viii
Preface ix
The research for this book spread over eight years, encompassed various
forms, and included study visits to several cities. The latter included
London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Suzhou,
Jinan and Guangzhou. I undertook several hundred one-to-one inter-
views and gathered many more anonymous questionnaires. For two chap-
ters of this book, my colleague Qihai Huang engaged in three months
participant observation research in a large British owned store in Beijing.
I interviewed local managers and expatriates from Japan and the United
Kingdom, but mostly local staff from all levels of the firms’ hierarchy.
Even in business research in the United Kingdom, these voices are rarely
heard. Such voices from China are even less audible. I suspect that for
most of those I talked with, this was the first time they had ever been
interviewed, let alone by a ‘foreigner’. With few exceptions, they engaged
in this novel and unfamiliar process with good humour and often sur-
prising candour, providing illuminating glimpses and insights into their
working lives and sometimes their broader expectations and experiences.
Most appeared to enjoy this encounter just as much as I did. Indeed,
on more than one occasion I was told that staff were disappointed that
I had notinterviewed them!
In the course of such a long research project, numerous debts of
gratitude accrue. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those
companies and individuals in China, Japan and the United Kingdom
who gave their time so generously. I thank, in particular, Jun Abe,
Caroline Boddie, Nathalie Champel, Emily Chen, Chen Shubi, Chen
Xiaohua, Dong Yanyan, Mohamed El Fanichi, Fred Fukumoto, Gao
Yidao, Redtenbacher Guenter, Mathew Guildford, Heng Hong, Kazunari
Honda, Mugikura Hiroshi, Huang Ke, Teruyuki Iida, Makoto Imai,
Toshihiko Inaba, Tadashi Ito, Dean Jia, Joe Jiang, Jiang Yan, Masae
Kanetake, Nobuo Kawabe, Yoshimi Kodama, Li Fengjiang, Li Gan,
Bacon Liao, T.C. Lim, Linda Lin, Lu Zhenghong, Hakim Maaref, Takeshi
Matsui, Takeo Mishima, T. Nakamichi, Hanae Nakano, Satoshi Osada,
Yoshiaki Ota, Yoshikazu Otsuka, Ouyang Xiqin, Nancy Qi, Toshiko
Sasame, Elaine Shen, Shi Jiangfeng, Mary Shi, Shigeki Shimozawa,
Nobutaka Shiroki, Song Ze, Ian Strickland, Ken Takai, Akihiko Tanaka,
Tian Hansen, Damian Toulouse, Brian Tuson, Takashi Urano, Wang
Chunli, Wang Jingshi, Vincent Wang, Wang Zhengyao, Kelvin War-
burton, Wei Hua, Wei Nan, Wen Dong, Bill Whiting, Bob Wilkins,
David Williams, Tim Winsey, Stephen Xiao, Toshiyuki Yahagi, Mitsuru
Yamada, Takahide Yamamoto,Takashi Yamashita, Yang Changhong,
Andy Yoji, Frank Yu, Maggie Yuan, Zhao Menhong and Geoffrey
Zhou.