E-strategy in the UK retail grocery sector

After a decade of Internet trading, retailers in the UK have experienced mixed fortunes with their Internet-based ventures. Online shopping success stories include; Tesco’s, which has positioned itself as a world leader in online grocery retailing by providing an Internet-based home delivery of over 40,000 products and making the service available to almost 95 per cent of UK residents. Similarly, Sainsbury’s offers 71% per cent of UK residents the opportunity to shop online however the company does not have the same international recognition. Waitrose too has expanded its Internet-based shopping services, aided by its acquisitions in OCADO. By contrast, Somerfield, and more recently Iceland have stopped their Internet shopping operations due to poor trading results and economic difficulties, despite the fact that Iceland was the first grocery retailer to offer online shopping to the majority of the UK mainland. The key aims of this paper are to explore how major grocery retailers coming to the one line market; to consider why some are more successful than others and to develop an understanding of the role of strategic thinking in online retailing. More specifically, the paper will initially, investigate the strategic options open to retailers developing activities online and finally, discuss the extent to which e-strategies represent a long-term approach to planning. The paper presents a literature review, which provides the conceptual foundations for investigation of the significance of e-strategy development within retailing. This model is then compared with evidence from secondary data sources and business results from leading UK grocery retailers in order to debate and analyse the likely importance of e-strategies in the success of online grocery retailing in the UK

Work restructuring and changing craft identity: the Tale of the Disaffected Weavers (or what happens when the rug is pulled from under your feet)

This article explores the changes in worker identity that can occur during manufacturing restructuring – specifically those linked to the declining status of craft work – through an in-depth case study of Weaveco, a UK carpet manufacturer. An analysis of changes in the labour process is followed by employee reactions centred on the demise of the traditional craft identity of male carpet weavers. The voices of the weavers dramatize the tensions involved in reconstructing their masculine identity, and we consider the implications this has for understanding gendered work relations

The fragility of functional work systems in steel

The I/N case offers insight into the interrelationship between work systems, living standards and performance. It demonstrates that a high road approach and functional work systems positively impact stakeholders’ lives, improve production efficiency and benefit the local and macro-level economies and societies in which they are embedded. It also shows that such work systems can be implemented in contexts with a history of adversarial labor-management relations. However, broader external forces can conspire to make it very difficult for firms to sustain functional work systems despite initial successes in specific contexts. Financial markets in particular make long term commitment to stakeholder groups other than shareholders (i.e. employees, suppliers and communities) conditional on profit maximization and share price appreciation. Yet the logic of profit maximization for the benefit of shareholders leads to short termist decisions that undermine the very commitments that were so necessary for creating a new work system: security is threatened, training is put on the back burner; trust is irreparably undermined. Indeed, because of the inherent contradiction between strategic approaches to maximizing stock market and long term product market success, these high road systems are fragile in national frameworks that subject them to low road pressures without a forum for resolving the difficulties that arise from opposing market pressures and responses

Intensification of workplace regimes in British horticulture: the role of migrant workers

In Britain, international migrants have very recently become the major workforce in labour-intensive horticulture. This paper explores the causes of the dramatic increase since the 1990s in the employment of migrant workers in this subsector. It locates this major change in a general pattern of intensification of horticultural production driven by an ongoing process of concentration in retailer power, and in the greater availability of migrant workers, shaped in part by state initiatives to manage immigration.The paper draws on concepts developed in the US literature on agrarian capitalism. It then uses case histories from British horticulture to illustrate how growers have directly linked innovations involving intensification through labour control to their relationships with retailers. Under pressure on 'quality', volume and price, growers are found to have ratcheted up the effort required from workers to achieve the minimum wage through reducing the rates paid for piecework, and in some cases to have changed the type of labour contractor they use to larger, more anonymous businesses. The paper calls for further, commodity-specific and spatially-aware research with a strong ethnographic component

The adoption of e-business technology by SMEs

The paper examines the key factors influencing the adoption ofe-business technology by SMEs. To this end, the paper draws on a rangeof literatures on the diffusion of new information and communicationtechnologies (ICTs), many of which have hitherto been treated asseparate. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, e-businesstechnologies are the latest in a line of new ICT technologies. Whenexploited successfully, ICTs have increased firm competitiveness eitherby raising the efficiency of internal communication and organisationand/or supply chain relationships, or by facilitating the development ofnew/improved products and services. Second, it is hypothesised that manyof the factors affecting the successful adoption of new technologies aregeneric in nature. With regards to SMEs specifically, consideration ofearlier research may assist us in identifying a set of enablers andbarriers to e-business adoption. Hence, by explicitly acknowledging thecontext and prior history of research in the area, we are able to mapout the dimensions of future theoretical and empirical research ine-business adoption by SMEs. In addition to drawing together factors identified by existing research,the paper highlights the implications of network externalities for thetiming of technology investments and the returns that accrue to earlyand late adopters. It also draws attention to a number of problemsassociated with the analytical concept of ‘the SME’ when it is appliedto this area. The research proceeds by clearly defining thetechnological and organisational characteristics of the e-business modeland a brief consideration of the trends in adoption in the UK vis-à-visadoption in the other G7 countries. Together these set up a detailedconsideration of the internal and external factors influencing adoption.A qualitative approach, in the form of a detailed case study, is thenused to explore the potential usefulness of the factors that have beenidentified. The results of these findings are then drawn together in theconcluding section of the paper.economics of technology ;

Foreign Banks in Transition Economies: Small Business Lending and Internal Capital Markets

On the basis of focused interviews with managers of foreign parent banks and their affiliates in Central Europe and the Baltics, we analyse foreign banks’ small business lending and internal capital markets. This allows us to complement the standard empirical literature, which has difficulty in measuring important variables such as lending technologies and capital allocation systems. We find that the acquisition of local banks by foreign banks has not led to a persistent bias in these banks’ credit supply towards large multinational corporations. Instead, increased competition and the improvement of subsidiaries’ lending technologies have led foreign banks to gradually expand into the SME and retail markets. Second, we show that local bank affiliates are strongly influenced by the capital allocation and credit steering mechanisms of the parent bank. The credit growth of subsidiaries therefore potentially depends on the financial health of the foreign based parent bank.foreign banks, transition economies, small business lending, internal capital markets

(R)evolution of the E-grocery Industry: Strategic Implications

The use of the Internet in grocery retailing created the need for new business models, but it did not bring radical changes to consumer behaviour. Despite adopting revolutionary business models in their early days, online grocery firms did not manage to survive or reach profitability without using existing supermarket infrastructure and knowledge. Today, with most online grocers supplying small market niches, it is important to understand the reasons that made online grocers adopt a hybrid click and mortar strategy. Historical evidence from online grocery in the UK and the US suggests that firms had to adopt contingent strategies to face the difficulty of attracting consumers, sectorial entry barriers and financial targets.e-grocery, contingency, mismatch, revolution and evolution

Marketing plan of Plácido Gómez

Treball Final de Grau en Administració d'Empreses. Codi: AE1049. Curs 2017-201

State Aid in the Enlarged European Union. An Overview

In the early phase of transition that started with the 1990s, Central and Eastern European Countries pursued economic restructuring of the enterprise sector that involved massive injections of state support. Also foreign investment from the West and facilitation of the development of a market economy involved massive injections of state support. With their accession to the European Union (EU), levels and forms of state aid came under critical review by the European Commission. This inquiry investigates whether the integration of the new member states operates on a level playing field with respect to state aid. Quantitative and qualitative analysis is relied upon to answer this key, as well as other, related questions. Findings suggest that in recent years a level playing field across the EU has indeed emerged. State aid in the new EU member countries is rather handled more strictly than laxer compared to the ‘old’ EU countries.competition policy, economic transition, EU enlargement, state aid

Flanders Language Valley; Industrial Districts and Localized Technological Change

This case study questions how Flanders Language Valley developed as a cluster of localized technological change. Through licensing the attracted small, mostly foreign firms use the research lab of L&H Speech Products as a common source of codified knowledge and with their fast entrepreneurial reaction they complement it by developing a broad range of applications. Subsequently, the created favorable communication conditions induced innovative linkages between the attracted SMEs. Like the Silicon Valley role-model, a strong pilot firm, venture capital, education and most of all the informal networking were critical to the development of FLV. Companies ''find'' each other at FLV to their mutual advantage. They learn from each other and benefit from developing and using common pools of resources in proximity, e.g., companies find employees in the ''collective pool of labour'' created by several education and training programmes.industrial organization ;