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This paper aims to investigate the strategic consequences of manufacturing location decisions, with a focus on understanding the link between collocating manufacturing with other value chain activities, via reshoring or retaining and organizational agility.

The paper uses qualitative data from 115 interviews with executives from UK high value manufacturing companies to explore the recent phenomenon of reshoring and the strategic effects of manufacturing location.

The location of manufacturing is operationally and strategically important for multinational companies. The spatial dispersion of manufacturing is determined by firm-specific and external factors, both of which are subject to constant change. The analysis shows that concentrating on manufacturing in their home countries enables firms to increase organizational agility and stimulate innovation. Better integration with and more extensive collaboration between related value chain activities, such as research and development, sales and marketing, leads to higher flexibility, speed and responsiveness to customer requirements. However, under certain conditions, firms also continue to benefit from the known advantages of offshoring.

This research sheds light on possible strategic downsides of global value chains, characterized by dispersed activities and intermitted processes. The results provide evidence that retaining manufacturing or bringing back manufacturing operations to a company’s home country can increase organizational flexibility, speed, adaptability, innovativeness and responsiveness to customer requirements. As these capabilities are critical for long-term survival, especially in dynamic environments, firms need to review their global factory configurations and determine whether the short-term advantages of foreign locations continue to justify offshoring practices.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the adoption of environmental management and collaboration practices by US small and medium-sized manufacturers and explore whether there are discernible differences in product and process innovation that can be explained by differences in their adoption.

This research uses descriptive statistics and probit regression analysis of survey data from 295 small and medium-sized US manufacturers in seven industries.

There are significant industrial sector differences in the adoption of environmental management and collaboration practices, larger and older companies are more advanced in their adoption of these practices, and companies adopting these practices are outperforming their competitors in terms of product and process innovation.

This research assesses US industry sector differences among small and medium-sized manufacturers in the adoption of environmental management and collaboration practices and differences in product and process innovation linked to this adoption.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the adoption of sustainability practices by small and medium‐sized manufacturing (SMM) firms, the ways these firms work with their stakeholders for social and environmental purposes, and the relationships between the adoption of sustainability practices, stakeholder interaction, and product and process innovation.

This paper uses data from telephone interviews with 296 companies, a sustainability typology, and descriptive and statistical regression analysis.

The majority of the firms are adopting sustainability practices at least to some degree, stakeholders such as community advocacy groups, employees, suppliers, customers, and the local media are influencing the adoption of sustainability practices, and firms with high adoption rates of environmental practices are more successful in product and process innovation.

The results of this research can help firms and stakeholder groups with their joint efforts to develop sustainability strategies. Community advocacy groups, employees, suppliers, customers, and the local media are capable of motivating firms to give something back to the communities in which they conduct their business.

This paper contributes new understanding of the adoption of sustainability practices by SMM firms, the ways these firms work with their stakeholders for social and environmental purposes, and the relationships between the adoption of sustainability practices, stakeholder interaction, and product and process innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework for helping inventors and start‐ups identify and acquire the technical, market, financial, and human resources they need if they are to create and grow new ventures that can realise market opportunities.

The method for this paper is a case study of a non‐profit company and four of its business clients.

The paper finds that a resource assessment framework has proven effective for assisting early stage ventures when it is combined with helping them to identify business opportunities and to improve their resource position in order to exploit these opportunities.

This research contributes to theory and practice by highlighting the value of creative coupling of resources and opportunities for entrepreneurs and by demonstrating a novel and effective framework customized for the needs of new emerging technology ventures.

This paper explores whether there are discernible differences in the environmental innovation and performance of US chemical firms that can be explained by differences in the management practices and characteristics of the firms. Using data from a national survey, firm visits, and phone interviews, this research assesses the pervasiveness of the adoption of environmental management practices. It also assesses whether the adoption of these practices is related to leadership in environmental innovation and performance. This paper shows high levels of adoption of several practices for improving environmental innovation and performance. Firms are using practices such as total quality management, certification of suppliers, R&D, and the involvement of employees in innovation and training to integrate environmental management with their production systems. In addition, firms with the highest adoption levels of environmental practices have substituted cleaner materials and changed their production processes for cleaner production, and they are leaders in reducing their generation of chemical waste.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

Offshoring, bringing operations back into the home nation of multinational enterprises, is becoming the prevailing mode of business, bringing an increased level of agility for the organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This paper aims to examine and analyze the effects of government policy, quality of human resources and professional institutions on workforce competitiveness using welding technology variable as a mediating variable.

This study used quantitative research by using partial least square – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the collected data.

Based on the results of the analysis, it was noted that there was a significant influence between government policy, quality of human resources and professional institutions on welding technology. The coefficients are characterized by a positive direct relationship, which means that the higher the quality of government policy and human resources professionals variables, the higher the value of the institute of welding technology.

This study recommends that government should create policies that have benefits to competitiveness of Indonesian workforce. Implications from this study support government to use the model to determine and initiate policies in the field of welding as well as establish clear and standardized operating standards and recruitment process (government apparatus) that can accommodate the competitiveness of welding workers in Indonesia.

The originality of this paper is that the participatory approach was adopted in this study using PLS-SEM. In addition, this study was one of the first studies to carry out research at the BNSP office, BLK-Bandung-Jakarta, Makassar, B4T and dismiss the Ministry of Manpower and the Ministry of Industry in Jakarta, Indonesia, where there was no research in this location. Previous studies conducted research in various case studies.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Organizational agility has cope to strongly impact on performance. Firms can become more agile and innovative by closely integrating production with other activities of their value chain in their home country as opposed to moving manufacturing facilities to overseas sites.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Antibiotics shortages have become an increasingly common problem in Europe because of several reasons, including the offshoring of the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients for many of these products to low production cost countries, such as China and India. The problem has deteriorated because of the Covid-19 crisis that has put most global value chains (GVCs) under great stress. This situation has boosted extensive discussions among academics, practitioners and policymakers on possible changes to the configuration of GVCs. This paper aims to focus specifically on antibiotics supply chains from the perspective of a small country (Sweden), and analyse the pros and cons of backshoring and nearshoring alternatives, as a means to reduce drug shortages.

This work adopts a systemic perspective to capture the implications of reshoring for the different stakeholders involved in the antibiotics field. The present meso-analysis, focusing at the industry level, is based on multiple sources of primary data collected between 2014 and 2021, including participation in policy-related projects and interviews with over 100 representatives of key stakeholders in the antibiotics field.

This paper shows how reshoring can address the problems of drug shortages and reduce availability risk in antibiotics’ GVCs. However, the authors show that no simple and best solution exists because both alternatives of reshoring, i.e. backshoring and nearshoring, entail pros and cons for different stakeholders. The authors conclude with implications for policymakers and managers.

The analysis of pros and cons of both backshoring and nearshoring for various stakeholders offers relevant implications for research on operations and supply management, international business and economics/political science.

This paper looks at reshoring as a policy-driven decision and provides an innovative systemic perspective to analyse the implications for different stakeholders of two reshoring options concerning the antibiotics supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether the adoption of e-commerce improves company business, innovation and operational performance and whether sales internationalisation might moderate this relationship.

The research is based on a survey within the fashion industry and a multi-step linear regression model investigating the relationships between e-commerce and performance.

Results reveal that e-commerce improves innovation performance but has no significant relationship with business and operational performance. Also investigating whether the sales internationalisation might moderate the relationship between e-commerce and performance, the findings reveal that the adoption of these tools might even be negative when applied at the international level in particular by considering innovation operational practices, and the research suggests for fashion companies the necessity to develop strong markets’ knowledge and brand awareness among foreign markets and customers before investing internationally.

This paper offers an original analytical approach to identifying the relationships between a company’s adoption of e-commerce, performance and internationalisation within the fashion industry.