Manufacturing Back-Shoring: A Research Agenda for an Emerging Issue in International Business

Abstract

The paper is focused on a phenomenon – the so called “back-shoring” (often indicated also as “onshoring”, “in-shoring”, “re-shoring”, “reverse-shoring”, “international re-concentration”, “reverse-globalization”, even if they are not always considered synonymous) – which is becoming more and more diffused in the last years. Notwithstanding this increasing diffusion, it is still rarely investigated by academics and often discussed only in economic newspapers and white papers by management consulting firms.

Manufacturing “back-shoring” is the process by which previously off-shored production are moved back to the domestic location (Kinkel and Maloca, 2009; Leibl, Morefield and Pfeiffer, 2011) an earlier off-shored or off-shore outsourced manufacturing activity is relocated in the firm’s home country. Based on a comprehensive literature review and evidences regarding 87 western companies, the objectives of this paper are: a) to analyze the relevance of such a managerial phenomenon; b) to identify and classify its motivations; c) to highlight some research questions.

Keywords: reshoring back-shoring on-shoring in-shoring internationalization manufacturing

JEL Classification: F21, F23