Proposing an Integrative Model for Reshoring Antecedents

Introduction

In the past years, understanding the strategic direction of manufacturing has become the focus of a large scale debate (Ellram, 2013). Taking advantage of the goods manufacturing wave, Obama’s administration developed a series of interesting initiatives with the goal to attract American companies to manufacture again their products/brands on the home soil (Gray, Skowronski, Esenduran, & Rungtusanatham, 2013; Regalado, 2013; Plumer, 2013). The same pattern is seen in Europe in which several countries have assumed the capital interest of attracting European companies to manufacture back home by providing the necessary financial and infrastructural support (Foresight, 2013; Veugelers, 2013).

Currently, the reshoring phenomenon received plenty attention from the popular press especially in the U.S. (United States of America) (Ellram, Tate, & Petersen, 2013). However, despite the growing practice of reshoring, only recently has the concept captured the attention of the academic community (Ellram et al., 2013; Fratocchi, Mauro, Barbieri, Nassimbeni, & Zanoni, 2014), especially after the phenomenon brought to the attention of the academic community by Kinkel, Lay, & Maloca (2007). The diversity of interest in this topic has spawned a profusion of overlapping concepts, such as onshoring, backshoring, in shoring, reverse shoring, and nearshoring that limits our understanding of this phenomena (Fratocchi et al., 2013). Nevertheless, there is a generalized consensus among researchers that reshoring describes a manufacturing location decision based on moving, entirely or partially, the previously offshoring production processes back to their home original country (Ellram, 2013; Gray et al., 2013). Foerstl, Kirchoff, & Bals (2016) define the phenomenon as the relocation of value creation tasks from offshore to geographically closer locations and although this broad definition is correct, it simultaneously includes two closer though different dimensions: reshoring and nearshoring. In a simple way it is possible to define reshoring as the return from a previous offshoring decision (Fratocchi et al., 2013), bringing manufacturing activities or services from broader countries back to the original country (Initiative, 2015). Reshoring is basically the opposite, i.e., production movement of an offshoring decision (Arlbjørn, Mikkelsen, Schlichter, & Thoms, 2013; Ellram, 2013; Gray et al., 2013)

Despite the fact that reshoring is more advanced in the U.S. where several companies are already admitting to reshore their manufacturing operations (Gray et al., 2013; Sirkin, Zinser, & Hohner, 2011), some manufacturing sectors in Europe are also reshoring (Foresight, 2013; Fratocchi & Silva, 2018; Fratocchi et al., 2014; Fratocchi et al., 2015; Kinkel & Montalvo, 2014), a trend which is expected to keep growing with the development of technological capacities, efficiency, productivity, robotics and nanotechnology (Veugelers, 2013) and the increasing direct or indirect consumers’ pressure, for faster, higher quality and safe products while creating jobs for the local society in a sustainable way (Naitove, 2013; Plumer, 2013; Tseng, 2011). Also, there seems to exist some political pressures to move production processes in that direction (Regalado, 2013).

Notwithstanding its growing importance in Europe, however, in our view there is a dearth of research about this topic, including the evaluation in different sectors most affected and the evolution of this phenomenon over time. Previous studies have established a connection between a number of scopes that may impact on reshoring (Foresight, 2013; Sirkin et al., 2011).