China's recent prosperity has created a vast new class of consumers, as globalization has transformed the high streets of its cities and towns. Before 1992, foreign companies were largely excluded from China's domestic retail market. However, with entry into the WTO in 2001, overseas retailers from many Western as well as Asian countries have flooded into the PRC. This demarche has transformed consumer choice, as it has reformed what was previously a drab state-dominated sector into a brash competitive one. Retail sales are estimated to run to over 17 trillion yuan (US$2.58 trillion) in 2011.
The main author of a new book on this fascinating topic is Jos Gamble, a professor of international business at Royal Holloway, University of London, assisted by Qihai Huang, a senior lecturer at Lancaster University, who wrote a couple of the chapters. The study was mainly financed by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)/Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), as part of the “Cultures of Consumption” programme. The project deals with UK and Japanese multinational retailers now spreading their wings in the Chinese market.
The work is divided into ten chapters. It starts with an instructive introduction, followed by a contextual description of China's retail sector. After this, human resources management practices in the sector are set out, then shop-floor perceptions of employment practices at a UK-owned store in China. Next, transferring organizational practices across the waters is dealt with, followed by a look at how this occurs in Japanese retail multinational corporations (MNCs). After this, the authors look at whether “McJobs” or skills-based jobs are created, followed by a chapter on “one store, two employment systems.” Next, what is described as the “rhetoric of consumer control” is discussed. Last, a set of concluding comments are presented.
This study draws on detailed case-studies, based in the workplaces of the multinational retailers concerned, vis-à-vis the literature in the social science fields relevant to the subject. The methodology is based on extensive interviewing, survey questionnaires and participant observation over many years (pp. 7 ff).
The main thrust of the study deals with how multinationals in general set out to transfer many of their parent-country organizational practices to other cultures, in this specific case to China (pp. 32 ff). The research explores differences between Japanese and UK MNCs, with the former relying more on expatriates to fill top management jobs and the latter more on locals. National differences also showed-up vis-à-vis customer service, with the Japanese being seen as regimented and prescriptive, compared with the UK-owned companies. Another finding is that the practices and norms in local labour markets can be a greater barrier than cultural differences. The book capably brings out the complexities of firm-level employment relations as found in the broader PRC institutional setting. It also shows how the MNCs made relatively few concessions in adapting to local Chinese people-management practices. It cogently highlights the limited degree to which foreign firms adapt to “the Chinese way of doing things.” The arguments and evidence are cogently presented and accordingly persuasive to this reviewer.
A possible weakness of the work, however, is that it does not have a very explicit “theoretical” framework and model to present, although its main thrust is analytical. The evident empiricism is, of course, both “hard-nosed” and soundly integrated. But greater originality in theory, to counterbalance practice, would have been a bonus.
Even so, to its credit, the book is clearly written and well presented, with a minimum of jargon. It has, more or less, an adequate number of supporting tables and figures, and the statistical data does not overwhelm the narrative. A number of fine photographic illustrations are included. There is also a comprehensive bibliography on the subject and a short index but no glossary or list of abbreviations. Whether the book will have a wider appeal than to the academic market it targets, is moot. It may, however, be useful to both undergraduates and postgraduates interested in the economic and management dimensions of contemporary China.
The book avoids either extolling or decrying the globalization process and its impact on shopping in the People's Republic. It hints that “perhaps, from such quotidian and unremarkable encounters…deep rooted social changes might germinate and develop” (p. 227). Maybe so, but it is as yet too early to say.
