Argos, described by comedian Michael McIntyre as the 'weirdest shop on earth', has been in the spotlight. And there has been some good behaviour around it which is a breath of fresh air in today's corporate world, writes Ian McConnell.

All too often in the business world, it seems that the employees without whom enterprises would not exist are right down the pecking order.

In big companies, we sometimes see company executives, on occasion with egos greatly exceeding their abilities, calling the shots with a woefully short-term perspective and with scant regard for their workforces as they eye potentially fat bonuses.

And, in the publicly quoted company sector, executives have to dance to the tune of the shareholders.

This is not so much of an issue where these investors are traditional institutional shareholders but it can be a big problem when hedge funds and other activist investor types with even shorter time horizons than bonus-driven company executives pitch up.

Against this somewhat lamentable (although it is important to emphasise far from universal) backdrop, it was heartening to hear supermarket group J Sainsbury refer to the best interests of staff as it terminated talks with Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com over a sale of the supermarket group’s Argos business.

Many people understandably have a soft spot for Argos.

This popular brand was a striking arrival on the high street in the 1970s. For generations of children, there was probably something magical about going into a shop that seemed to have no stock but a huge variety of goods including toys, chemistry sets, bicycles or whatever arriving seemingly out of nowhere as the........

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