Assessing the Productivity of the UK Retail Sector

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Several

Performance, labour flexibility and migrant workers in hotels: An establishment and departmental level analysis

“…The choice of productivity measure really matters in hospitality as in other service sectors (Reardon and Vida 1998). Market imperfections are usually considered important in explaining differences between physical and financial productivity (Reynolds et al 2005) in the generic literature, as are differences between new entrants and existing firms, but neither explanation would apply in a clear and consistent way across departments within a single firm. The differences between departments reinforce Brown and Dev's (2000) conclusion that firm or even establishment-level estimates of hotel productivity, can conceal major differences in departmental performances (Baker and Riley 1994).…”

“…This is a recurring theme in the general literature on productivity (Bloom and van Reenen 2010;Faggio, Salvanes, and van Reenen 2007), stemming from concerns about the limitations of findings derived from aggregated metrics (Reynolds et al 2005), due to aggregation bias or loss of variation (Higon et al 2010). Research on hotels similarly found that aggregated productivity metrics obscured the performances of different departments (Brown and Dev 2000), which conceivably can operate in contrasting directions (Baker and Riley 1994), not least because there tend to be important differences in operating conditions at this scale.…”

“…Prices, however, are influenced by market imperfections (Reynolds et al 2005). Although physical measures have been utilised (Ball et al 1986;Brown and Dev 2000;Hu and Cai 2004;Johns et al 1997;Mason, Robinson, and Bondibene 2009), most research on hotels employs financial measures or composite measures combining physical and financial measures (Anderson et al 1999;Barros 2005;Hu and Cai 2004;Sigala et al 2005).…”

A Multi-Agent Simulation of Retail Management Practices

“…The retail sector in particular has been identified as one of the biggest contributors to the productivity gap that persists between the UK, other European countries and the USA [2].…”

Multi-Agent Simulation and Management Practices

“…There is no doubt that management practices are linked to the performance of an organisation (Reynolds et al, 2005;Wall & Wood, 2005). Best practices have been developed, but when it comes down to the actual application of these guidelines considerable ambiguity remains regarding their effectiveness within particular contexts (Siebers et al, forthcoming a).…”