Corporate restructuring, regulation and competitive space : the US department store in the 1990s

Abstract

The US department store industry has undergone an important round of strategic corporate restructuring during the 1990s. This thesis explores these geographies of retail restructuring through an in depth study of the sector, based partly on interviews with a number of leading industry executives, Wall Street analysts and commentators, triangulated with industry reports, press releases and the retail press.

The corporate reorganisation of the US department store industry is shown to have occurred through the mediums of financial, portfolio and organisational restructuring. Investigation of financial restructuring requires an examination of the geography of high leverage and divestiture, as well as the strategic restructuring effects of US bankruptcy legislation on the constituent firms. Investigation of portfolio restructuring within the sector requires an understanding of the regulatory constrained nature of merger and acquisition activity and how strategic consolidation is mediated by a variety of factors including geography, synergy realisation and the relatedness of firms. Investigation of organisational restructuring requires analysis of the geography of knowledge in corporate decision-making, as firms mediate between the tendencies of centralisation to reduce cost, and decentralisation to increase responsiveness. Beyond these three dimensions of corporate restructuring the thesis also explores the micro-scale - the reorganisation of the internal department store environment - and the new business models adopted by department store firms pursuing e-commerce strategies.

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