This paper has two main aims. Firstly to conceptualize the production networks of the video games industry through an examination of its evolution into a multi-million dollar industry. Secondly, to use the video games industry to demonstrate the utility of Global Production Network approaches to understanding the geographically uneven impacts of globalization processes. In particular, three key notions of value, power and embeddedness are used to reveal the most powerful actors in the production network, how they maintain and exercise their power, and how the organization of production is manipulated as a result. It is argued that while hardware production is organized by console manufacturers using truly global sourcing strategies, the production of software is far more complex. In fact, software production networks are bounded within three major economic regions: Western Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. This paper seeks to explain how and why this has occurred.

Continuing advances in digital technology are producing widespread changes in work and its management, particularly where work is performed away from an employer's premises through remote working. Whilst such changes can offer remote workers greater temporal and locational flexibilities, there is growing concern that their work is being insidiously commodified in line with Labour Process Theory to enhance the position of firms in Global Value Chains (GVCs). Integrating insights from these frameworks and relevant fields of scholarship, we examine how the nature and location of remote work and its HRM are being recontextualised. Our systematic analysis of peer-reviewed published empirical findings demonstrates the need to broaden the existing firm-centric focus of the GVC literature to encompass workers and their HRM, particularly as there are increasing numbers of workers operating outside firms using digital technology. It also reveals that the digitisation of the labour process is generating a spectrum of nuanced and unfolding implications for remote workers and their HRM, and a complexity of spatial reconfigurations, which provoke debate and agendas for future research and HRM practice.

Very little is currently known about the globalization of the temporary staffing industry, a strategically significant sector given its role in promulgating wider labor market flexibility. This article starts to rectify this research lacuna in four ways: by conceptualizing the international expansion of temporary staffing and comparing it to other business service sectors, by identifying and mapping the top twenty transnational staffing agencies, by offering a typology of the leading transnational agencies based on their functional and geographic characteristics, and by charting a research agenda for future work on this sector.

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Coe N. M., Johns J. and Ward K. Transforming the Japanese labour market: deregulation and the rise of temporary staffing, Regional Studies. The Japanese employment system has undergone significant structural change since the early 1990s. Widespread deregulation and industrial restructuring have increased the number of non-regular workers in Japan, including temporary or 'dispatch' workers supplied by temporary staffing agencies, who numbered some 1.6 million and 2.8% of the total working population by 2007. This paper charts the evolution of the Japanese temporary staffing industry in three stages from 1947 to the present. These phases are delimited by two important regulatory changes with respect to temporary staffing: partial legalization in 1986, and full legalization in 1999. The paper argues that a distinct Japanese temporary staffing industry has been produced through a multi-institutional field involving the interaction of a range of actors. While government deregulation has been the key shaper of the industry's emergence, other actors, including labour unions, transnational agencies, and domestic agencies, have played important roles at various times. While the growth of the industry is best interpreted as a gradual evolution of the traditional employment system, the size of temporary staffing employment - and non-regular working more generally - has now reached the stage where it has become a significant political and regulatory issue. [image omitted] Coe N. M., Johns J. et Ward K. La transformation du marche du travail japonais: la dereglementation et l'essor de l'emploi interimaire, Regional Studies. Le marche du travail japonais a connu d'importants changements structurels depuis le debut des annees 1990. La dereglementation generalisee et la restructuration industrielle ont augmente le nombre de travailleurs irreguliers au Japon, y compris les interimaires fournis par les missions d'interim, dont quelque 1,6 millions, representant 2,8% de la population active globale en 2007. Cet article cherche a tracer l'evolution des missions d'interim au Japon a trois etapes, de 1947 jusqu'au present. Ces etapes sont delimitees en fonction de deux importants changements reglementaires quant a l'interim: la legalisation partielle en 1986, et la legalisation pleine en 1999. On affirme qu'une mission d'interim distincte a ete etablie au Japon a partir d'un domaine a institutions multiples, impliquant la participation d'une gamme d'acteurs. Alors que la dereglemetation s'avere la force motrice cle de l'essor de l'interim, d'autres acteurs, y compris les syndicats ouvriers, les agences exterieures et interieures, ont joue d'importants roles a diverses reprises. Tandis que l'on peut interpreter l'essor de l'interim comme l'evolution reguliere d'un marche du travail classique, l'importance de l'effectif interimaire - et de l'emploi irregulier en general - est arrive au point ou il est devenu une importante question de politique et de reglementation. Interim Japon Travailleurs irreguliers Dereglementation Changement inst...