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Complementing the Reshoring of Manufacturing Activities: The Relocation of Business Functions

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Reshoring of Manufacturing

Abstract

This chapter sheds light on the reshoring of business functions. Policy makers and scholars are increasingly interested in the relocation of once offshored activities; however, the empirical evidence is mostly focussed on manufacturing activities, while very little is known about business functions that assist manufacturing activities. Using data from the Offshoring Research Network survey, this chapter provides some empirical evidence regarding the plans to reshore administrative and technical work. In particular, the chapter analyses the entry-mode, the home and the host country context, the business functions, the industries, the size and the performance of once offshored activities that are now planned to be reshored.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Fratocchi et al. (2014, p. 56), according to whom “(…) the term [manufacturing] “reshoring” is meant to indicate a generic change of location with respect to a previous off-shore country”.

  2. 2.

    For a comprehensive overview of the empirical evidence regarding the reshoring and back shoring phenomena see Fratocchi et al. (2015) and Stentoft et al. (2016).

  3. 3.

    The original items were: “What are the plans for this implementation for the next three years?” “Relocate to another offshore location part or all offshore activities” (i.e. Further Offshoring) and “Relocate back to home country part or all offshore activities” (i.e. Back shoring).

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Albertoni, F., Elia, S., Piscitello, L. (2017). Complementing the Reshoring of Manufacturing Activities: The Relocation of Business Functions. In: Vecchi, A. (eds) Reshoring of Manufacturing. Measuring Operations Performance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58883-4_3

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