One Store, Two Employment Systems: Core, Periphery and Flexibility in China’s Retail Sector

In the latter part of the twentieth century, economic and social changes put organizations under pressure 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 Western contexts 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; Smith, 1994; Walsh, 1990; Walsh and Deery, 1999, 2006), most analyses on flexibility derive from manufacturing and production settings, with few focused on the retail sector (although see Baret et al., 2000; Nätti, 1990; Wong, 2001). This imbalance may distort our understanding of flexibility. When workers 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).