Purpose




Digitalization has transformed several industries during the past two decades. In this paper the authors focus on the retail sector, where new business models help retailers and suppliers meet the ever changing and demanding needs of retail shoppers. One example of this business model innovation is multi-sided digital platforms, which have become popular as they connect consumers with suppliers from around the world with a large ecosystem to support the retail platform. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of how multi-sided digital platforms are transforming the retail exchange logic and assess the implications and impact of these platform-based businesses on the retail sector, especially for business managers and consumers.




Design/methodology/approach




In this paper, the authors employ literature review, conceptual analysis and qualitative case study methodology. The authors provide an overview of how the platform economy is affecting the retail sector through the illustration of four digital multi-sided platforms: Alibaba Group, Amazon.com, eBay and Rakuten Group, and what differentiates them from incumbent business models in retailing.




Findings




The findings suggest that platforms transform the transaction logic of retailing as they simply intermediate transactions between buyers and suppliers rather than handling the entire supply and logistics chain themselves. The authors highlight the role of consumer understanding and Big Data as one example of how multi-sided digital platforms differentiate from their non-platform competitors.




Practical implications




The paper highlights how incumbent retailers can compete against new forms of business, such as digital platforms, and the authors demonstrate some of the managerial capabilities needed to remain relevant amidst this new digital competition.




Originality/value




Very little empirical studies in marketing and retail literature have focused on multi-sided digital platforms and their business models. The present study fills this gap with an overview of how multi-sided digital platforms transform the retail sector.

/pdf/digitalization-in-retailing-multi-sided-platforms-as-drivers-57zrtgz59d.pdf

Digitalization in retailing: multi-sided platforms as drivers of industry transformation

The present paper analyses how top managers construct the meaning of sustainable human resource management (HRM) and its responsibility areas and how they identify and prioritize stakeholders in sustainable HRM. The empirical data were collected as part of the Finnish HR Barometer inquiry. A qualitative analysis reveals four dimensions of sustainable HRM: Justice and equality, transparent HR practices, profitability, and employee well-being. It also reveals four broader responsibility areas: Legal and ethical, managerial, social, and economic. Contrary to the prior green HRM literature, ecological responsibility was largely ignored. The study also reveals a wide range of stakeholders, specifically, owners, managers, employees, customers, and employee representatives, as well as their special roles and requirements for sustainable HRM. These findings contribute to the literature of sustainable HRM by illustrating the dimensions and broader responsibilities of sustainable HRM as seen by top managers. Their conceptions of sustainable HRM are largely neglected in the prior literature despite their crucial role in legitimating HRM and thus sustainable HRM in companies. These results also contribute to the theory of stakeholder salience (identification and prioritization of stakeholders) in the sustainable HRM context from the viewpoint of top managers.

Sustainable Human Resource Management with Salience of Stakeholders: A Top Management Perspective

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to explore HRM practices and HRM-performance (HRM-P) link in public and private sector organizations across three societal clusters: the Anglo, the Germanic, and the Nordic European. Design/methodology/approach – The article is based on international Cranet HRM survey data collected from large private and public organizations. Findings – According to results, HRM is more advanced in private companies than in public sector organizations, even across three societal clusters. Instead, the analyses related to HRM-P link in private and public organizations refer to interesting similarities but also differences between organizational sectors (public versus private) and societal clusters. Research limitations/implications – The main limitation is retaining in those performance indicators that are applicable in both private and public organizations: subjective measures of productivity and service quality, only. Performance measures relevant especially in the public sector (e....

Human resource management practices and the HRM-performance link in public and private sector organizations in three Western societal clusters

With the shift in paradigm occurring for retailing, this paper puts out a call for academics researching in the area to take up the challenge of novel research rather than the more typical incremen...

Retail Marketing: A Novel Research Agenda:

First-line supervisors in U.S. retail organizations are unable to resolve nearly 34% of typical daily customer problems for their organizations. The purpose of this single-case study was to explore the strategies retail supermarket managers have used to improve first-line supervisor problem solving abilities within a retail supermarket company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Data were collected from semistructured interviews with four retail store manager participants with a successful record of improving first-line supervisor problem solving abilities. Based on inductive data analysis and methodological triangulation of the data collected, four themes emerged after the data analysis: (a) the importance of communicating expectations with first-line supervisors, (b) coaching first-line supervisors on performance, (c) first-line supervisor learning and development, and (d) measuring first-line supervisor performance. Findings from this study warrant additional empirical exploration of strategies for improving first-line supervisor problem solving abilities.

/pdf/a-case-study-exploration-of-strategies-to-improve-first-line-1tg1f4elr7.pdf

A Case Study Exploration of Strategies to Improve First-Line Supervisor Problem-Solving Abilities in the Retail Supermarket Industry

Purpose – The purpose of the article is to contribute to HRM‐performance research by focusing on how HR managers discursively construct performance in local government HRM.Design/methodology/approach – The study is carried out in Finnish local government organizations, where HR managers of ten large and medium‐sized cities were interviewed. The study adopted a constructionist approach: performance is constructed through the talk of different stakeholders, in this case, HR managers. The analysis draws upon discourse analysis.Findings – Performance in local government HRM is constructed through three predominant discourses: the service discourse, the process discourse, and the customer change discourse. The central finding of the study is the strong role of local residents, portrayed as external customers to HRM.Research limitations/implications – Typical to discourse analysis, the number of interviews is limited and the results cannot be generalized. Thirdly, according to the constructivist approach, resea...

Performance in local government HRM: the role of external customers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the routes of team goal attainment through individual and social mechanisms. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on a qualitative thematic analysis of interviews, annual reports and observations of team meetings conducted within a Finnish department store. Findings – The key findings of our analysis are three fold. First, we identified four routes to team goal attainment: team leadership, one’s own work, customer service and team work. We propose that for team members, these routes to goal attainment are more important than the organizational goals of sales and reputation themselves, since sales and reputation may be too far removed from the team’s everyday work. Second, both individual and social mechanisms are needed for team goal accomplishment. This finding highlights the importance of the social identity perspective in binding individual and collective motivations together. Third, teamwork in our case department store is somewhat affected...

Routes to team goal attainment in retail

Abstracts | English Political and Public Supports | English Political and Public Support Brings Progress at Finland’s

Assessment Method for Analyzing and Developing Human Resource Management Practices in the Nuclear Power Industry

In this paper, we focus on the role of the first line manager in the Finnish retail environment. The role of the line manager has in general strengthened as a part of the general trend to decentralize management and responsibility in organizations. However, the role of retail line managers in supporting both the work ability and well-being of employees and the performance of the store, involves particular challenges specific for the retail sector context. Specifically, we are interested in how the interviewed managers position themselves towards both the employees of the store and the chain under which they are employed. In this study, we unravel some of the tensions and resources in the relations between first line managers, store employees and the retail chain. Our analysis shows shifting positions of the first line managers in constructing boundaries of relatedness, distance and detachment towards store employees and chain management. In other words, the interviewees both distance themselves from employees and the chain and assume relatedness to the same actors by occupying various subject positions. They construct their professional identities as supervisors through constantly shifting identifications vis-a-vis these actors. As a result, we argue that this shifting is a way for the first line managers to cope with the conflicting expectations due to their in-between position.

Shifting subject positions of first line managers in retail trade

In the safety critical nuclear industry, the tension between the predictability of processes that ensures safety and flexible practices in managing unexpected situations poses a challenge for developing organizational capabilities. The regulatory, standardized side of nuclear production is well managed in the industry through professional training. The challenge is, however, to support learning that allows routine practices to evolve and develop into new ones when needed, forming new capabilities for the organization. In this paper, we analyse the collaboration between HR and line management for enhancing the learning of new practices in a complex work environment, and discuss how the predominant forms of collaboration rise to this challenge.

Collaboration between HR and Line Management Enhancing Learning in Complex work

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Sara Lindström

Author Tools

Chat about Author