The COVID‐19 pandemic has led to a sharp increase in online trade. This article examines the impact of the pandemic on online grocery retail in Germany. Here we follow and refine the multi‐level perspective by Geels, and examine to what extent and why the online grocery retail expanded during the pandemic. A particular focus is on the spatial expansion into rural areas. The study shows a general upswing in the grocery trade and disproportionately high growth in online grocery trade and identifies driving and limiting factors. While COVID‐19 has opened a window of opportunity, our results indicate little transition of grocery to e‐grocery. This finding can be explained by the sudden and temporary constellation at the level of the socio‐technical regime during the pandemic. As a result, we argue for a rethinking the temporality of windows of opportunities and the related vulnerability of the innovations which need them.

In this article, we combine a workplace‐centred Labour Process Theory approach with a multi‐level Global Value Chain perspective to link digital labour process transformations in the fast‐fashion value chain to broader dynamics of digital value chain restructuring. Drawing on a case study of H&M and Zara, we show how these retailers’ digital supply chain management strategies are linked to the de‐skilling, standardization and rationalization of tasks and to the emergence of new digital forms of labour control in production, logistics and retail. At the same time, we find that the effects of these transformations on working conditions are mediated by workers’ position in the value chain as well as by gender and capital‐labour power relations. The article contributes to debates on value chains and digitalization by revealing how, under digital capitalism, the ability to control and digitally integrate labour processes in complex store, logistics and manufacturing networks represents a key source of power in buyer‐driven value chains.

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Online retail is currently profoundly restructuring the working conditions in the retail sector. Existing studies generally describe the working conditions in the large warehouses of online retail as ‘digital Taylorism’. This article broadens this perspective and draws on the theoretical concept of the local labour control regime. It explores how managements’ technological and social labour control strategies vary spatially between online retail warehouses located in inner and outer metropolitan areas of the four largest German cities. The study uses qualitative methods and is mainly based on expert interviews with executives, representatives of trade unions and works councils, representatives of associations, and further experts. This study gains insights on the spatial variety of labour control and thus is relevant for international research on labour control and for practitioners’ ability to create decent and humane work.