Johanna Commander

Soft skills and employability: Evidence from UK retail:

This article contributes to ongoing debates about soft skills in front-line interactive service work in considering employability in the UK retail sector. It recognizes how UK government policy has emphasized the importance of qualifications in enhancing employability. However, it suggests that for front-line work in retail it is soft skills that are required to access entry-level jobs. The article notes how these soft skills have traditionally been dominated by debates about emotional labour. Drawing on a survey of 173 clothing, footwear and leather goods retailers, the article argues for a need to recognize the broadening of soft skills to also include aesthetic labour. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the broadening of soft skills with regard to policy initiatives to encourage the long-term unemployed into the retail sector.

What we know and what we need to know about graduate skills

The expansion of higher education has led to more graduates in the UK labour market. Despite government expectations, this expansion has not boosted national economic competitiveness. This article argues that current understanding of the impact of graduates’ skills is limited by methodological and conceptual narrowness in current research and that a broader research agenda is required. This agenda needs to cover not just the supply but also the demand, development and deployment of graduates’ skills and, as a consequence, distinguish between ‘graduate skills’ acquired in higher education and the ‘skills of graduates’ formed prior to, in and parallel to higher education.

‘You Monitor Performance at Every Hour’: Labour and the Management of Performance in the Supermarket Supply Chain

With reference to the performance management research agenda, this article focuses on the politics of production in food manufacturing and distribution companies in the supermarket supply chain. Burawoys concept of ‘factory regimes’ is utilised to explore the broader context of labour process change in inter‐linked organisations in the retail supply chain. The article examines the extent to which new despotic or coercive regime characteristics are emerging that weakens the power of both suppliers and labour. In revealing changes in the nature and dynamics of performance regimes within these organisations, the article exposes the connections and linkages between workplaces as distinct moments in the integrated circuit of capital.

New Initiative, Old Problem: Classroom Assistants and the Under‐Valuation of Women's Work

Centred on classroom assistants in Scotland, this article examines the process by which an occupation dominated by female workers becomes under-valued. The qualitative data reveals the cognitive errors made by the key actors—government, employers and unions in this process.