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Dans une séance exceptionnelle du séminaire EHESS de Patrick Fridenson, Daniel Raff, associate professor à l'University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School), présentera ses recherches sur la crise récente de la librairie aux Etats-Unis et l'essor puis la chute de la grande chaîne de librairies Borders le mardi 18 novembre à 17 h à la Maison Suger, 16-18 rue Suger, 75006 Paris. Vous y êtes les bienvenus. Voici un résumé de l'exposé :Daniel Raff explores the business history of Borders, the US book retailing firm. This company's establishments were large, unusually broadly merchandised, modern in their presentation, and conspicuous in the retail landscape. The company first made the Fortune 500 six years after its 1995 IPO. Its stores became a familiar sight across the United States and in a number of major cities abroad. But the firm’s collapse, when it came in 2011, was complete. It is popularly thought that Borders was fatally weakened by Internet competition, with the coup-de-grace coming from electronic reading devices. Raff argues – with detailed financial analysis, extensive interviewing over a decade and a half with principals and many other actors, and a careful reconstruction of decision making – that the fundamental problems lay in strategic disorientation and cost structures, with a governance and incentive structure that if anything made the fundamental problems worse. His analysis offers insights both for firms facing the threat of digital disruption and, more broadly, for economic thinking on how to address issues of fixed costs and variety in an environment of increasingly heterogeneous competition.Très cordialement Patrick FridensonCentre de Recherches HistoriquesEcole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales190-198 Avenue de France75244 Paris cedex 13http://crh.ehess.fr/document.php?id=341