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

Despite the increased attention paid to the role and effects of migrant labour in the contemporary economy, there has been insufficient attention to the role of employers and the employment relationship. Recent studies have highlighted distinctive labour power characteristics of new labour migrants from Central and Eastern Europe that make them ‘good workers’ in the eyes of employers. Drawing on multiple case studies across the supermarket supply chain, this article explores what kind of human resource migrant labour is perceived to be, particularly by employers, and what happens in practice as the dynamic tensions of the employment relationship unfolds in particular sector contexts. It argues that utilisation is conditioned more by the requirements of temporal flexibility – framed by the dynamics of employment within the supply chain – than any essential features of migrant labour power.

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. Burawoy's concept of 'factory regimes' is utilised to explore the broader context of labour process change in interlinked 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.Labour and performance management in the supermarket supply chain 1 circuit of capital. The overall concern is thus to contribute to growing debates exploring the changing nature of workplace performance regimes. Organised in four main parts, the article first explores performance management and production politics, focusing specifically on routine work and retail supply chains. It then describes the research method and data sources. The third part presents the substantive findings on the relationship between supplier organisations and their retail customers. How do these complex and changing exchange relations condition what Burawoy (1985) termed 'factory regimes' and patterns of conflict, cooperation and consent in the labour process? The fourth part provides an analysis of these findings and develops the wider implications for understanding the complex and changing structure of exchange and production relations.

This article considers employees' experiences of a major organisational redesign project, which sought to deploy robotics technologies to improve the performance of National Health Service pharmacy distribution in one part of the UK. The principles of Lean-type approaches partly informed the redesign project, with senior managers seeking to tap the benefits of new technologies to streamline processes, while also arguing that change would bring opportunities for up-skilling and inter-professional collaboration. The project managed to avoid some of the negative consequences for job quality predicted by the critical literature on Lean-type approaches in public services. However, employees' experiences varied, with some reporting new engagement in learning and collaborative service delivery 'nearer the patient', while others complained of fewer opportunities to rotate across a variety of job roles. More fundamentally, employees questioned management's assumption that new technologies and Lean-type approaches are crucial to improved performance and better jobs. For many employees, both performance and job quality were compromised by the 'leanness' of staffing models, which limited opportunities for development and contributed to work intensification. This tension is likely to remain a key theme in employment relations in the UK and beyond for as long as the public sector faces financial austerity.3

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent AbstractThe 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 paper 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 HE study.2