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This paper aims to offer a long-term systematic picture of the evolution of manufacturing offshoring (in terms of intensity, geography and drivers) highlighting the changes in the surrounding context and the resulting transitions points (“points in time”) that have shaped its development path.

Three statistical tools were adopted on a dataset of 644 cases. First, the authors resorted to multiple structural change tests to identify the transition points. Second, the authors explored offshoring geography by conducting a network analysis. Finally, the authors adopted gravity models to shed light on offshoring drivers.

Results highlight three offshoring phases: expansion (2002–2006), reconsideration (2007–2009) and rationalization (2010 onwards). During the first phase, characterized by economic growth, firms were mainly interested in economic savings; offshoring to low-cost countries was the prevailing location strategy. Subsequently, during the economic crisis, the number of cases declined and the main drivers became market-based factors together with the research for cost savings. Finally, in the third phase, when the economy was still stagnating and new manufacturing technologies appeared, the number of offshoring cases has further decreased, and technological- and market-based factors have become the main location drivers.

The study is the first to adopt a systematic, empirical and quantitative approach to analyze the evolution of the manufacturing offshoring considering both the phenomenon itself and the triggering changes in the surrounding context. In doing this, the authors also tested the importance of considering the point in time in offshoring strategies.

Offshoring has been studied widely in the literature on strategic management and international business. However, apart from its consideration as an administrative activity, scant attention has been paid to the offshoring of the human resource (HR) function. Research in this regard has instead focussed on outsourcing (Reichel and Lazarova, 2013). The purpose of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of companies’ decisions to offshore HR activities. It adapts the outsourcing model of Baron and Kreps (1999) by including the HR offshoring phenomenon and a dynamic perspective.

While the analysis is mostly conceptual, the authors ground the author’s arguments in offshoring data from the Offshoring Research Network, to explore whether the drivers for offshoring HR differ from the drivers for offshoring other administrative activities. The idiosyncrasy of the HR function is supported by the authors’ exploratory analysis and also by the descriptive case of a multinational and its experience with offshoring.

A coevolutionary model is proposed for understanding the behaviour of companies offshoring their HR activities. This study contends that companies should address their decision to offshore HR activities from a dynamic perspective, being aware of three processes that are in constant change: the evolution of the HR function, the evolution of service providers, and the evolution of offshoring decisions.

This study seeks to make a threefold contribution to the international business, strategy, and HR management disciplines.

An indiscreet strategy of offshoring from low-cost countries (LCCs) can do more harm than good, since invisible supply chain risks may increase hidden costs and subsequently more than offset cost-saving opportunities. Considering the potential impact of these risks on offshoring, the purpose of this paper is to identify risk factors that significantly hinder the efficiency of offshoring and then measure specific risks associated with offshoring in foreign countries.

This paper develops performance metrics for gauging the offshoring attractiveness of potential sourcing countries using data envelopment analysis and then identifies the benchmark sourcing country using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP).

This study reveals that, defying the conventional wisdom, LCCs are not necessarily the most desirable offshoring destinations. This study also discovers that LCCs tend to be less business friendly, less logistically efficient, and riskier to source than their high-income country counterparts.

This paper is one of the first to introduce the concept of wealth creation efficiency for an offshoring decision and consider a host of key determinants such as wealth creation efficiency, logistics efficiency, business friendliness, and various supply chain risks for selecting the most desirable offshoring destination.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how three key dimensions of a firm’s offshoring portfolio – location diversity, functional diversity and governance mode – affect the financial and innovation outcomes of offshoring.

The authors investigate the relationships between the diversity of a firm’s offshoring portfolio and its offshoring outcomes using a sample of US, European and Asia Pacific firms engaging in offshoring activities.

The authors found that: location diversity shows a significant “flipped S-shape” relationship with innovation outcomes, but has a negative impact on financial outcomes, functional diversity has a significant and positive effect on innovation outcome and the use of an outsourcing governance mode significantly moderates these relationships, such that the degree of offshore outsourcing weakens some of these effects.

The authors conclude that firms which strategically coordinate all three dimensions of their offshoring portfolio are more likely to achieve better innovation or financial outcomes from their use of offshoring in global supply chain and sourcing.

This paper aims to focus on production offshoring and “backshoring” in a representative sample of 151 New Zealand manufacturers. It identifies how and why firms offshore; why many increase their offshoring while others “backshore”; and why most firms continue to compete internationally without offshoring.

Data collection used a two-wave postal questionnaire survey of 676 firms, with a usable response rate of 22.3 per cent and no indication of non-response bias.

Most exporters manufactured only from their New Zealand base, but 44 per cent had outsourced some production offshore in the period 2001 to 2011. Among the 67 offshored firms, 11 had then “backshored” to New Zealand. The main reasons for offshoring were lower labour costs and capacity constraints in New Zealand. “Backshoring” occurs when lower labour costs become offset by impaired capabilities in flexibility/delivery; quality; and the value of the Made in New Zealand brand especially among consumer goods producers. Stay at home firms reported fears of lowered quality; country loyalty; and their Made in New Zealand country of origin brand.

Offshoring begins tentatively but many firms then increase their offshoring to reap the benefit of lower labour costs. These reasons for “backshoring” mirror those given for keeping production in New Zealand and must be given careful consideration by firms considering offshoring.

There are few studies of offshoring by smaller manufacturers and none that have elucidated this as a process, one that is still avoided by many and can end in costly “backshoring” for others.

A service production system has a structure composed of task execution, agents performing tasks and a resulting service output. The purpose of this paper is to understand how such a service production system changes as a consequence of offshoring.

Drawing on practice theory, the paper investigates how offshoring leads to reconfiguration of the service production system. Through a multiple case methodology, the authors demonstrate how agents and structures interact during reconfiguration.

The paper analyses the reconfiguration of components of a service production system in response to change ignited by offshoring. The authors find recurring effects between structures that enable and constrain agents and agents who shape the structure of the production system.

The paper offers a novel contribution to the service operations management literature by applying practice theory. Moreover, the authors propose a detailed, activity-driven view of service production systems and service offshoring. The authors contribute to practice theory by extending its domain to operations management.

Service production systems have the ability to self-correct any changes inflicted through offshoring of the systems, which helps firms that offshore.

The paper is aimed at service professionals and offshoring managers and proposes a novel presentation of the service production system with a description of how it responds to offshoring. The authors contribute to theory by applying practice theory to the fields of service operations management and offshoring.

We treat offshoring as a managerial innovation. Should it still be considered an innovation? The purpose of this paper is to use innovation theory, especially, Rogers' diffusion of innovation theory (DOI) to examine this question.

The paper examines the case of electronic data systems (EDS), a very large Information Technology Professional Services (ITPS) company, using a case study approach based on interviews, internal documents and secondary sources.

At EDS it was found that offshoring has been fully assimilated within just a few years. During the early 2000s, EDS faced the challenge of a large‐scale shift in the competitive landscape and moved a large share of its global operations to offshore locations. The paper shows how this innovation has been diffused within the firm through the creation of an assessment and migration organization that has institutionalized and routinized the process of offshoring. At EDS, each client project goes through a centralized offshoring assessment process to determine where best to send the work and how to perform the knowledge transfer quickly and effectively. Observations are made about the speed of diffusion: about 7‐10 years in this case, from initial innovation agenda setting to its routinization.

This paper filled a gap in studying managerial innovation; made some estimates of the speed of diffusion; and applied the hypothesized stages of innovation diffusion to the context of offshore software services. The limitation is that this is a case study and therefore generalization may be qualified.

This paper is among the first that studies offshoring (as opposed to outsourcing) in terms of DOI theory.

The paper aims to examine the degree of changes in action readiness and mindset for the IT offshore outsourcing (offshoring) practice of a number of leading finance and insurance organisations. In particular, the article investigates the action readiness (the state, condition or quality of being ready) and mindset (habits, opinions or perceptions which affect a person's attitudes) of organisations for IT offshoring.

The research method applied has explorative research characteristics and consisted of two phases. The first phase included conducting interviews with project managers of 12 organisations in home and offshore countries and the second phase was concerned with an in‐depth analysis of projects in three organisations. By adopting a process research approach, the research takes into account the dynamics of IT offshoring projects in terms of five essential aspects, i.e. the way of working culture, method use, IT activities, IT governance, and knowledge sharing.

The findings indicate that to a greater extent organisations have realised readiness for method use and the mindset for IT activities, and that the overall improvements regarding these aspects have been modest in the last two years. On the other hand, the mindset for dealing with cultural difference has increased while readiness for flexible working, tracking of requirements change, efficient division of work, and systematic communication is still inadequate.

As the findings are concerned with a small sample and particular industries, they are limited in nature. More research is needed to update the findings in other industries with a larger sample. This would help in achieving stronger external validity.

The model used in this research can help organisations in identifying how well they are prepared for or have improved IT offshoring practice in terms of five essential aspects. Based on the degree of readiness and mindset at hand, they can make use of the findings related to particular aspects. In this respect, the findings may provide valuable insights for practitioners.

Most IT offshoring studies employ a variance research strategy, by which cause‐effect relationships among dependent, independent, and mediating factors essential to the subject matter are studied. As an alternative to this strategy, this research adopts a process research approach, which is concerned with the dynamics of IT offshoring practice, which takes into account the emergent and on‐the‐fly nature of IT projects. Such dynamics are examined in terms of two conceptual levels, i.e. action readiness (ability, condition of being readiness) and mindset (opinions, perceptions). These levels, which are often employed as a separate focus in existing studies, are found to be useful in closing the gap between action readiness and mindset for IT offshoring.

Offshoring involves transferring or sharing management control and/or decision making of a business function to a supplier in a different country, which entails a degree of two‐way information exchange, coordination and trust between the overseas supplier and its client. The purpose of this paper is to understand the current trend of offshoring and identify the risks involved in offshoring. This paper also proposes a risk mitigation strategy to combat offshoring risks.

The research is primarily based on professional literature reviews to identify risks associated with offshoring, which are mainly classified, in structural and operational risks categories. Additional risks are identified in the following areas: transaction, financial, value, socio‐economic, country risks and so forth. This research provides mitigation strategies to minimize or eliminate these risks. A survey of business individuals is used to determine the general perceptions of offshoring and the associated risks. Finally, the mitigation strategy is applied in a real‐life instance to validate its usefulness.

The research indicates that a majority of business professionals have little or no knowledge of methods to mitigate offshoring risk, though the marketplace trend is towards more offshoring in the future. Companies continue to increase the amount of offshoring activities without properly considering the associated risks.

The effects of improper implementation of offshoring activities have led to much publicized product recalls that have harmed firm profits. Managers need to use the developed mitigation strategy or develop their own model to address the risks of offshoring. Continued failure to do so will become evident as product recalls increase and customer satisfaction levels decrease.

This study serves as a framework for the thought process that should occur for successful offshoring activities. Companies that use this framework should tailor it to their individual situations to maximize its efficacy.

The purpose of this paper is to present recent empirical results concerning offshoring and backshoring of manufacturing from and to Sweden, to increase the understanding of manufacturing relocation in an international context. In particular, extent, geographies, type of production, drivers, and benefits of moving manufacturing in both directions are investigated.

The study is based on survey data from 373 manufacturing plants. The same set of questions is used for both offshoring and backshoring between 2010 and 2015, which allows similarities and differences in decision-making and results between the two relocation directions to be identified.

There are many significant differences between offshoring and backshoring projects. Labour cost is the dominating factor in offshoring, as driver and benefit, while backshoring is related to many drivers and benefits, such as quality, lead-time, flexibility, access to skills and knowledge, access to technology, and proximity to R&D. This is also reflected in the type of production that is relocated; labour-intensive production is offshored and complex production is backshored.

Plants that have both offshored and backshored think and act differently than plants that have only offshored or backshored, which is why it is important to distinguish between these plant types in the context of manufacturing relocations.

The experience of Swedish manufacturing plants reported here can be used as a point of reference for internal manufacturing operations.

The survey design allows a unique comparison between offshoring and backshoring activity. Since Swedish firms in general have been quite active in rearranging their manufacturing footprint and have experience from movements in both directions, it is an appropriate geographical area to study in this context.