This article seeks to develop the concept of labor regimes as a tool for understanding the uneven labor outcomes of global production networks (GPNs). Existing work on labor regimes tends to give primacy to the control of labor, thereby analyzing labor regimes largely from a governance perspective. The agency of labor, however, is deeply embedded in the workings of labor regimes in GPNs, and remains somewhat undertheorized therein. In this article, we seek to build on recent work that has revivified the concept of labor regimes in the context of global production to develop an approach that brings the governance and agency of labor under one analytical domain. For this purpose, we develop a multiscalar conceptual framework with relations amongst and between labor, capital, the state, and international civil society organizations delimited as the key dynamics shaping labor regimes. By employing comparative case study methods and qualitative inquiry, the article deploys this framework to examine and compare the labor regimes of the Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan apparel industries, which exhibit seemingly very different labor outcomes in the context of enrollment in similar GPNs. Based on the findings, the article explains how and why labor regimes are shaped as a result of the variable intersections of governance and agency, which in turn are deeply embedded in, and constitutive of, both global production dynamics and territorially specific characteristics.

Although online retailing has expanded dramatically over the past decade, research on the topic by economic geographers remains sparse. One recent hitherto unstudied trend has seen online retailers establishing physical grocery store networks in the Chinese market. This paper utilizes a case study of Alibaba's Hema grocery store chain to identify and analyze the distinctive and innovative methods that online retailers are adopting in the Chinese food retail market in the context of developing physical stores. Four aspects of innovation are examined, namely: format innovation involving the store as a local fulfillment centre providing efficient last-mile delivery; developing a more consumer-centric retail model; transforming domestic supply networks; and sourcing live seafood globally. These developments are all achieved and facilitated by the strong data-driven capabilities of Hema in the context of the wider Alibaba platform ecosystem. Overall, the paper demonstrates how the digital data capabilities of online retailers embedded in wider platform business groups are rapidly altering the competitive landscape of the food retail sector in China.

Editorial: into a third decade Neil M Coe, Neil M Coe Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7720-5061 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Simona Iammarino, Simona Iammarino Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK Email: s.iammarino@lse.ac.uk https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9450-1700 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar William R Kerr, William R Kerr Harvard Business School, Rock Center 212, Boston, MA 02163, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Eleonora Patacchini, Eleonora Patacchini Department of Economics, Cornell University, Uris Hall, 109 Tower Road, Ithaca, NY 14853-2501, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Frédéric Robert-Nicoud Frédéric Robert-Nicoud Geneva School of Economics and Management, University of Geneva, CH-1211, Geneve 4, Switzerland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Economic Geography, Volume 21, Issue 2, March 2021, Pages 165–168, https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbab006 Published: 28 February 2021

In this brief afterword, I reflect on the contributions to the Area special section on the "Geographies of Labour in a Changing Climate". I argue that there is an urgent need to develop a research agenda under this theme and that, with its focus on multi-scalar dynamics and the constrained agency of workers, labour geography already has a toolkit that is well attuned to the task. In conclusion, the case is made for developing an approach that might be characterised as a "political ecology of labour".

Geographical debates surrounding labour have hitherto tended to sideline its discursivity - that is its ongoing construction as a category of the economy - and the politics of the discourses of labour involved in this process. To address this lacuna, this paper engages with three bodies of scholarship in the social sciences which explicitly foreground the discursive construction of labour: work on subjectivity and power in the labour process; feminist investigations into gendered globalization processes; and studies on the discursive power of labour. These reveal labour discourses as multiscalar phenomena that operate at workplaces, as mechanisms of work organization and control within transnational capital circuits, as knowledge networks that underpin how labour is valued, and as resources for labour agency. The paper closes by proposing a distinctively geographical research agenda which involves mapping the discursive geographies of labour, examining how labour discourses are 'placed' and encountered, and exploring their role in building geographies of labour agency.

Global retail expansion involves dynamic relations between retailers and variegated institutional, competitive, and consumer-based demands across different spatial scales. Economic geographers have framed these processes through the interrelated concepts of territorial, network, and societal embeddedness of store-based retailers, but with a neglect of online retail transnational corporations, which might enter overseas markets with minimal risk and sunk cost. This research assesses the relevance of concepts of embeddedness in the light of virtual retail networks by assessing how knowledge from the home market mediates any perceived need to localize within host-market consumer cultures and institutions to achieve legitimacy, and, in turn, whether these activities might occur as a virtual or physical process. We undertook extensive case study research within five leading international online fashion retailers headquartered in the UK, involving fifty-five semistructured interviews with chief executives, and with managing, operations, buying, and merchandising directors. Our findings reveal market entry to be dominated by an inward-looking societal embeddedness approach with limited investment in overseas physical infrastructure and personnel, since the management of product ranges and pricing, along with merchandise fulfillment, typically reside in the home market. Yet, with international experience, we conceptualize a staged and currently limited investment in territorial embeddedness through local subsidiary offices critical to realizing network embeddedness with the fashion media and the reorganization of fulfillment within some key host countries and wider supranational regions. Such developments demand increased investment and a decentralization of authority that will, in turn, likely necessitate significant reorganization of these emergent international firms.

In this framing paper for the special issue, we map significant research on global production networks during the past decade in economic geography and adjacent fields. In line with the core aim of the special issue to push for new conceptual advances, the paper focuses on the central elements of GPN theory to showcase recent rethinking related to the delimiting of global production networks, underlying political-economic drivers, actor-specific strategies and regional/national development outcomes. We suggest that the analytical purchase of this recent work is greater in research that has continued to keep a tight focus on the causal links between the organizational configurations of global production networks and uneven development. Concomitantly, considerable effort in the literature has gone into expanding the remit of GPN research in different directions, and we thus engage with five domains or ‘constituent outsides’ that relate to the state, finance, labour, environment and development. We believe such cross-domain fertilisation can help realize GPN 2.0’s potential for explaining uneven development in an interconnected world economy.

Papers in Regional ScienceVolume 97, Issue S1 p. S211-S212 BOOK REVIEW Local clusters in global value chains: linking actors and territories through manufacturing and innovation Edited by Valentina De Marchi Eleonora Di Maria Gary Gereffi London: Routledge. 2018. 230 pp. ISBN 978 1 138 74286 4 (hbk) Neil M. Coe, Corresponding Author Neil M. Coe geonmc@nus.edu.sg Department of Geography, National University of SingaporeSearch for more papers by this author Neil M. Coe, Corresponding Author Neil M. Coe geonmc@nus.edu.sg Department of Geography, National University of SingaporeSearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 March 2018 https://doi.org/10.1111/pirs.12357Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume97, IssueS1March 2018Pages S211-S212 RelatedInformation

This paper presents the first economic geography study of Singapore's temporary staffing industry. Drawing on secondary data and semi-structured interviews with trade association representatives and senior executives from temporary staffing agencies, it examines the structure and characteristics of Singapore's industry and, more specifically, how its distinctive institutional configuration influences the activities of staffing agencies and the industry's overall trajectory. While temporary staffing in Singapore has experienced steady growth since the turn of the millennium, growth is ultimately constrained by both Singapore's regulatory environment and the inherent nature of its labour market. As such, the temporary staffing industry is still relatively small today, and has become increasingly saturated with strong competition between transnational and domestic agencies. Empirically, analysis of the Singapore case contributes to the wider literature on temporary staffing markets by profiling the nature and growth dynamics of a small and emerging temporary staffing market. Conceptually, the study reveals under-studied aspects in current work relating to how the market is shaped by intersections with shifting global divisions of labour, the nature of the state's managed immigration regime and elements of national labour-market culture.

Limits to Globalization: Disruptive Geographies of Capitalist Development Eric Sheppard Limits to Globalization: Disruptive Geographies of Capitalist Development Eric SheppardOxford: Oxford University Press, 2016 ISBN: 9780199681167 (Hardback), 160 pp. Price £30.00 Neil M Coe Neil M Coe National University of Singapore Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Economic Geography, Volume 17, Issue 6, November 2017, Pages 1325–1327, https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbx036 Published: 17 October 2017 Article history Received: 04 October 2017 Accepted: 06 October 2017 Published: 17 October 2017

Situated within geographical scholarship on policy mobilities, this article aims to direct attention to the state and corporate dimensions of corporate policy mobilizations as terrains that require further conceptual development. It argues that doing so is important for two reasons. First, it shows that national states should not be seen merely as functional and institutional infrastructures across and through which policies circulate, since national state policymakers also operate as active agents of policy mobilization across space and scale, especially in contexts of strong, centralized governance. Second, it illustrates how the economic dimensions of corporate actors engaged in mobilizing policy deserve more sustained analyses for a better conception of how firms' capitalist agendas shape their participation as policy transfer agents. We suggest that a relational economic geography perspective provides a set of conceptual tools — actors, networks, and value — to unpack the corporate rationalities and knowledge-sharing processes of firms. Drawing on research conducted on the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city, we show how national state policymakers and transnational conglomerates are active agents in circulating urban sustainability expertise across space. An appreciation of these geographies of policy knowledge across the state and corporate domains of policy mobilization is a first step towards grasping these varied registers of expertise, and their implications for the form and content of policies on the move.

This paper seeks to compare the processes of supply network transformation in China resulting from the market entry of retail transnational corporations (TNCs) across two food products, fresh milk and edible oil. The analysis demonstrates significant variations in both retailer management practices and strategic responses by suppliers between the two products. These variations, in turn, are seen to derive from the inherent nature of the commodities concerned, the relative balance of supply and demand, and the pre‐existing competitive and structural conditions in the different sectors before retail TNC entry. Overall, the paper calls for a nuanced and dynamic approach to retailer power and its impacts that recognises the complexity and unevenness of supply network restructuring in emerging markets.

This article provides an in-depth study of leading transnational food retailer Tesco plc to explore how its financial management and relations with the investment communitynotably its reputation for capital discipline-underpinned successful expansion. Informed by close dialogue with equity analysts, we investigate how this model deteriorated since the late 2000s with declining returns, leading to high-profile international divestitures. The analysis assesses the drivers of these difficulties, and conceptualizes them. It examines how the retailer, pressured by the investment community, reviewed its international strategy and attempted to 'reset' its relations with capital markets to re-emphasize shareholder value and returns. The research teases out the manner in which legitimacy with capital markets underpins the extent, pace and form of global retail expansion, leading to significant implications for workers, consumers and wider stakeholders across spatially dispersed host markets.

In this article, we critically analyse the September 2015 decision of the UK retailer Tesco to sell its highly profitable South Korean subsidiary Homeplus to private investors. For over a decade since market entry in 1999, Homeplus had grown steadily to achieve a market-leading position through a process of strategic localization in which Tesco's global business practices were selectively adapted to meet the specific needs of the South Korean market. Against this backdrop, we explain the exit decision through theorising the dynamic intersection of home and host market factors that developed contemporaneously from 2010 onwards. On the one hand, worsening market conditions and financial pressures in a post-crisis UK domestic market drove Tesco to refocus on its home operations and, ultimately, identify saleable assets to offset mounting debts. On the other hand, steadily growing resistance within the South Korean market from competitors, regulators, labour and consumers caused sales growth to stall and then start to decline. Our analysis contributes to the economic geography literature on retail divestment by conceptualising the relational process of divestment decision-making that encompasses the intersection of home and host market pressures as well as conditions across the wider portfolio of subsidiaries. The research is particularly distinctive in its profiling of this coevolution of drivers, and in distilling the different ‘domains’ of host market contestation. The analysis also has wider significance in the context of the broader literatures on economic globalization that have tended to focus heavily on processes of expansion and market entry and far less on the instances of failure and exit that are an integral and inevitable part of these wider dynamics.

In this article we mobilize a variegated capitalism approach to understand the development of the Norwegian temporary staffing industry. From this perspective, national temporary staffing industries are understood as contested multi-actor and multi-scalar institutional fields. The analysis explores the key actors and regulatory conditions that have interactively produced this field in the Norwegian context since initial deregulation in 2000, paying particular attention to the active role played by agencies and their collective organizations. In our account, the tight regulatory conditions for temporary staffing in Norway emerge as the main mobilizing issue for the agencies, as well as other political actors such as trade unions. It is argued that the nature of national labour laws, and struggles thereon, are defining characteristics which set the Norwegian market apart from the neighbouring Swedish staffing market. The Norwegian case enables us to contribute to the wider economic geography literature on temporary staffing markets by demonstrating the fundamental importance of national regulatory processes and the contested political processes that underlie regulatory change. It also demonstrates how national distinctiveness is actively produced in relation to extra-national dynamics in terms of both regulatory imperatives (e.g. via the EU's Temporary Workers Directive) and processes of migration. Overall, we demonstrate how national staffing markets are highly dynamic, multi-scalar institutional configurations whose particularities and complexities defy attempts to generalize across groups of seemingly similar national economies.

For all its success in 'globalizing' regional development, the Global Production Network (GPN) approach has arguably failed to account for the role of finance in the dynamics of the global economy and regional development. This lacuna is significant as finance is arguably even more globalised and networked than production. To address this gap the paper distills the concept of the Global Financial Network (GFN) from financial geography and related scholarship, with advanced business services, world cities, and offshore jurisdictions at the centre. Interactions between the GPN and the GFN are discussed, focusing on the financing and financializing of GPNs and the co-evolution of globalization and financialisation. Integrating finance into GPN entails more than a simple extension of the GPN approach; it would also enrich it conceptually, and enable it methodologically and empirically.

Wood S., Coe N. M. and Wrigley N. Multi-scalar localization and capability transference: exploring embeddedness in the Asian retail expansion of Tesco, Regional Studies. This paper revisits the ‘firm in the region’ and the ‘region in the firm’ dichotomy through the case of Tesco's retail expansion in Asia. It focuses on the tension between the transference of proven key capabilities to the host economies Tesco has entered, and strategic localization, primarily for customer-facing, corporate culture, regulatory and institutional reasons. It is demonstrated how the retailer has pursued a multi-scalar adaptive approach that goes beyond any standardized/localized dichotomy to respond to differences between and within national markets. In the process, this paper provides evidence of genuine two-way knowledge flow between the home market and subsidiaries, between subsidiaries themselves, and of subsidiaries granted autonomy and the ability to flex their strategies.

This chapter focuses on the connections between migration and labour market participation, but moving across national boundaries also disrupts and recasts more personal and intimate connections across geographic scales. Most of the women came to the UK as young single women, almost all of them before they had children, and, as the author has explained, their reasons for migration varied, as did the consequences. The author wonders about the extent to which women originally from Eastern European countries felt or desired connections across the generations with those currently living in the UK. The chapter ends with a plea that greater tolerance of difference and celebration of diversity are goals that must not be relinquished in a new period of austerity and recession.