Carley Foster

Gendered retailing: a study of customer perceptions of front‐line staff in the DIY sector

This paper reports findings from a small scale study exploring the role gender plays in the interactions between customers and front‐line staff in DIY retailing. Drawing on materials gathered through observations, informal discussions with staff and focus groups, this study suggests that “maleness” pervades many aspects of DIY retailing. For the respondents the image of the case retailer, B&Q, and the products sold had male connotations. Furthermore, male customers perceived male customer‐facing staff to have better knowledge of technical DIY than female employees, even though this was not always the case. Given the rising interest from women in home improvements, it would appear that measures need to be put in place to create a more “inclusive” DIY store environment for female customers, and one that challenges the stereotypical assumptions held by many male home improvement customers.

Aligning talent management with approaches to equality and diversity: challenges for UK public sector managers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the implementation of talent management interventions in UK public sector organisations.Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws upon the findings of a qualitative study of talent management in two UK public sector case study organisations.Findings – Implementing talent management was found to present particular tensions for public sector managers, particularly in terms of its alignment with well‐embedded diversity and equality policies and their own perceptions of fair treatment in the workplace. Despite an acknowledgement that the sector needs to attract, develop and retain the most talented individuals to achieve its modernisation agenda, interventions which require singling out those individuals for special treatment challenges many of its established practices for recruitment and selection, employee development and career management.Practical implications – Public sector organisations need to invest both time and effort into developing appropria...

Aligning teaching and practice: a study of SME marketing

Purpose – This study aims to explore the role of marketing in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and to consider how amendments can be made to the UK higher education (HE) teaching curriculum to inform marketing teaching and learning around a small business context.Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative, exploratory approach using semi‐structured in‐depth interviews amongst ten owners of SMEs in the East Midlands region of the UK was used.Findings – Marketing in SMEs is centred on customer engagement, networking and word of mouth communication. HE academic institutions should take account of these findings and work towards introducing SME‐specific marketing material in its teaching and learning curricula.Research limitations/implications – This study uses a small number of SME companies in one region and therefore the generalisability of the findings may be limited. Further research could extend the number of SME companies and to other regions of the UK.Practical implications – The findings ha...

Employee loyalty: an exploration of staff commitment levels towards retailing, the retailer and the store

Securing the commitment of employees can generate a number of organisational benefits, such as reducing recruitment costs and improving interactions between customers and employees. For retailers, a loyal workforce can therefore represent a source of differentiation and competitive advantage. Despite this, few retail studies have explored employee loyalty and have instead focused upon the loyalty of customers. This quantitative and qualitative exploratory study of store employees in three UK retailers aims to explore how employee loyalty manifests itself in a retail context. It proposes that employee loyalty in this industry is multi-faceted and can be understood in relation to commitment to the retailing industry, the retailer and the store. The findings also suggest that, due to their domestic circumstances, female general assistants are more likely to be loyal to their store than men.

Maximising women's potential in the UK's retail sector

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to show that a defining characteristic of the UK retail sector is the high number of women it employs but there remains an enduring under‐representation of women in its management positions. The majority of women in the industry work part‐time and this paper aims to explore the factors that impact upon the career progression.Design/methodology/approach – In the paper, 1,000 questionnaires were completed by store staff in three leading retailers, supported by interviews with store staff and SME retailers in the UKs East Midlands region.Findings – The paper finds continuing barriers to career progression for women working part‐time in retailing. Despite family friendly employment policies becoming an increasingly important feature of modern work organisations, career progression was informed by a traditional concept of a career based on full‐time working.Research limitations/implications – The paper was limited to one sector. There is a need for further studies into wo...

Implementing diversity management in retailing: exploring the role of organisational context

Abstract Diversity management is a means of managing customer and employee differences for the benefit of the organisation. This qualitative study considers how contextual factors influence diversity management implementation in different retailing environments. Exploratory research was conducted in three SBUs of a UK retailing group: the UK high street SBU, the US operations and the online SBU. Despite different cultural, legal and historical differences between the UK and US, these factors did not lead to significantly different ways of dealing with diversity in the UK high street and US businesses. Instead the extent to which individual differences were recognised was influenced by the selling environment and the SBUs size and structure. The paper recommends that retailers need to develop a ‘home-grown’ approach to diversity management that acknowledges their organisational context.

Job dissatisfaction among retail employees: a study of three leading UK retailers

Despite the general awareness that working in retailing is unattractive to many workers, relatively little is known about which aspects of retailing are actually disliked, or how that varies across groups within the workforce, employers, or types of store. Initial analyses from an extensive survey of UK retail employees show that statistically significant variations exist in terms of dislike of retail employment and particular aspects of that employment. Exploratory factor analysis shows that while a general dimension of discontent is identifiable, there are also specific concerns, such as among more senior staff who are particularly concerned about long hours, and younger employees frustrated at a perceived lack of career progression. However, there is also a dimension of relative contentment with work circumstances among large numbers of female part-time workers and older staff.

Female career progression in retailing

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to highlight the factors that limit and support female career progression in the retail industry.Design/methodology/approach – The research used a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Data were collected from employees and managers working in 31 stores belonging to national stores operating in the East Midlands as well as ten SME independent retailers based in the region.Findings – The women in this study can be categorised into those women who are not interested in pursuing a career in retail, those that seek promotion but have difficulties balancing the demands of their work and domestic circumstances and those who have actively pursued a career in the industry. Despite these categorisations, the study suggests that the career progression of all female staff is helped and hindered by a number of interrelating factors, such as whether they have a role model, are loyal to the store they work in or have children.Practical implications – It is prop...

An exploration of Icelandic marketing women entrepreneurs

The phenomenon of women’s entrepreneurship has gained significant momentum across the globe. Increasingly businesses started and managed by women are contributing to job creation, innovation and wellbeing (Kelley et al. 2015). Despite the contributions women entrepreneurs have made to overall economic wellbeing, the vast majority of prior research about women entrepreneurs has taken an individualcentric approach (Pathak et al., 2013; Jennings and Brush, 2013). However, recently we are observing a shift in the focus of women’s entrepreneurship research from microlevel and individual factors to a greater focus on how mesoand macrocontextual levels impact individuals’ decisions – that is, from “gender as a variable” to research based more on feminist perspectives and the formal and informal institutional factors that influence entrepreneurial creation by women (Brush et al., 2006). Even with the shift in research interest on the influence of contextual variables on women entrepreneurs, the impact of macronational social values and cultural traditions (AlDajani and Marlow, 2010; Roomi, 2013; Zahra and Wright, 2011) and gendered social forces (Brush et al., 2009; DíazGarcía and Welter, 2013; Loscocco and Bird, 2012) remains underresearched. Because entrepreneurship is a social embedded process, connecting entrepreneurial behaviours of individuals to their context can offer a more insightful explanation of the entrepreneurial phenomenon (Davidsson 2004; Sarasvathy 2004; Zahra 2007; Welter 2011; Zahra et al., 2014). Berg (1997: 262) argues that “the material and sociocultural contexts in which entrepreneurship take place are gendered”. Therefore, women entrepreneurship research would benefit greatly from taking into consideration how macronational factors, such as cultural norms and societal expectations, and the mesoorganizational structures and institutions are

An exploratory investigation of aberrant consumer behaviour in Libya: a sociocultural approach

Abstract Studies concerning aberrant consumer behaviour (ACB) are dominated by research conducted in the West. By examining the impact social and cultural factors have on the management and understanding of ACB in Libya, a Muslim country, this paper extends knowledge by exploring this issue in a different setting. Materials were collected by conducting in-depth interviews with 26 sellers in Libya and ACB was explored in three different contexts: grocery stores, computer stores and hotels. The study finds that the sellers use alternative marketplace behaviours to manage ACB to that described in the literature, namely informal, community-based approaches that reflect accepted societal and cultural norms. Furthermore, the study finds that not all activities reported to be ACB in the literature are perceived to be misbehaviour by the Libyan sellers.