For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.*Related content and download information correct at time of download. Design/methodology/approach -This research adopts a multiple case study approach with three leading UK grocery retailers as exemplars of fast-moving consumer goods retailers, conducted using multiple data collection techniques including interviews, system demonstrations, onsite observations and the use of archive information. Findings -ICT solutions have a direct positive impact on CO 2 emissions reduction but opportunities to further reduce CO 2 emissions are perceived as lying beyond retailers' own distribution networks. These opportunities are not fully utilised due to the complexities of collaborative ICT provisions and retailers' reluctance to share information with competitors.Research limitations/implications -A limitation of the study is that it is exploratory and only three cases were examined. Even though these three retailers represent over 60 per cent of the UK grocery retail sector, other retailers may deploy significantly different ICT applications. Practical implications -The research provides an overarching insight for businesses on how to leverage the existing and emerging information technologies for environmental and economic benefits. Originality/value -While sustainability issues have received increasing attention recently, the role of ICT in freight transport for CO 2 emissions reduction has not been investigated in depth and its impact is largely unknown. This research advances understanding about how ICT contributes CO 2 emissions reductions and provides a framework for further investigation.

Foursquare is a location-based social network (LBSN) that combines gaming elements with features conventionally associated with social networking sites (SNSs). Following two qualitative studies, the paper sets out to explore what impact this overlaying of physical environments with play has on everyday life and experiences of space and place. Drawing on early understandings of play (Caillois, 2001;Huizinga, 1992), alongside the flâneur (Benjamin, 1991) and 'phoneur' (Luke, 2006) as respective methods for conceptualising play in the context of mobility and urbanity, the paper examines whether the suggested division between play and ordinary life (Apter, 1991;Caillois, 2001;Huizinga, 1992) is challenged by Foursquare, and if so, how this reframing of play is experienced. Secondly, the paper investigates what effect this LBSN is having on mobility choices and spatial relationships. Finally, the novel concept of the 'phoneur' is posited as a way of understanding how pervasive play through LBSNs acts as a mediating influence on the experience of space and place.

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The modern retail store is a complex coded assemblage and data‐intensive environment, its operations and management mediated by a number of interlinked big data systems. This paper draws on an ethnography of a retail store in Ireland to examine how these systems modulate the functioning of the store and working practices of employees. It was found that retail work involves a continual movement between a governance regime of control reliant on big data systems which seek to regulate and harnesses formal labour and automation into enterprise planning, and a disciplinary regime that deals with the symbolic, interactive labour that workers perform and act as a reserve mode of governmentality if control fails. This continual movement is caused by new systems of control being open to vertical and horizontal fissures. While retail functions as a coded assemblage of control, systems are too brittle to sustain the governmentality desired.

We argue that the ideas, ideals and the rapid proliferation of smart city rhetoric and initiatives globally have been facilitated and promoted by three inter-related communities: (i) `urban technocrats'; (ii) a smart cities `epistemic community'; (iii) a wider `advocacy coalition'. We examine their roles and the multiscale formation, and why despite their influence they encounter a `last mile problem'; that is, smart city initiatives are yet to become fully mainstreamed. We illustrate this last mile problem through a discussion of plans to introduce smart lighting in Dublin.