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Using insights from the supply chain resilience perspective and the international business literature, this study aims to investigate the determinants of firms’ decisions to reshore manufacturing under the high levels of uncertainty brought about by the ongoing US–China trade war and COVID-19 pandemic.

The proposed conceptual framework is tested using survey data collected from 702 Taiwanese firms with manufacturing in China. The firms were drawn from a database compiled by Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.

The results show that two supply chain factors (tariffs and supply chain completeness) and two non-location-bound factors (labor cost and material cost) are critical determinants of the decision to reshore under uncertainty.

This research elucidates and empirically validates several factors that influence the reshoring decision in uncertain environments. The findings provide valuable theoretical, practical and strategic insights into how firms should manage their value chains in the post-COVID-19 era.

The purpose of this paper is to examine merchandise performance-based financial productivity of offshore vs reshore sourcing scenarios for fashion/seasonal products with higher demand uncertainty, using computer simulation software.

Using Sourcing Simulator^TM, the researchers generated a data set of 530 simulations concerning merchandising performance measures for offshore and reshore sourcing scenarios. Analysis of covariance was conducted for data analysis.

Results show financial productivity differs, depending on a sourcing decision between offshore and reshore sourcing scenarios as well as on the levels of volume error and assortment error. The reshore sourcing scenario through “Made-in-USA” domestic production strategy can have a better profitability, including gross margin return on inventory with service level, in cases of under-volume error and over-assortment error, than the offshore sourcing scenario.

Findings from this study are based on simulation data, which may have a gap between simulations and reality concerning the competitive advantages of “Made-in-USA” domestic production strategy. “Made-in-USA” domestic production strategy can be more agile and responsive to the uncertainty of markets and customer demands when the supply chain systems are well-integrated and fully implemented.

Results from this study contribute to fill the literature gap about differences of financial productivity between offshore and reshore sourcing scenarios for apparel manufacturers and retailers. This study also offers an insight of which decision response may be better to uncertain customer demands, while satisfying financial productivity.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive insight into the role of the quality management (QM) systems in international suppliers (e.g. ISO, Total Quality Management, Lean and Six Sigma) on outsourcing decisions of buyer companies with regard to reshoring activities.

By the means of a comprehensive survey data collected within USA textile and apparel industry, the authors identify four quality factors and compare these factors for international and domestic suppliers by the means of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and consequently define a reshore vector. Next, the most-effective QM system within international suppliers is analyzed by the means of a new application based on LDA.

The results reveal that international suppliers perform worse for all quality factors compared to domestic USA suppliers, which may leave the door open for reshoring activities. Furthermore, it is shown that Lean and Six Sigma within international suppliers lead to superior levels of quality because they are aligned along the most opposite directions against reshore vector. Therefore, it is claimed that Lean and Six Sigma within the international suppliers can inhibit reshoring activities of US companies.

The willingness of US textile companies to assist their international suppliers and the challenges on this subject are discussed on the basis that supplier development (or quality management) programs can be strong alternatives to reshoring activities.

QM systems in suppliers are analyzed with a new method within a new context based on reshore phenomenon, which provides an essential point of view for academic and industrial environments.

The purpose of this study is to explore reshoring drivers and barriers from a Swedish manufacturing perspective.

This paper is a case study, including four Swedish manufacturing companies, with focus on drivers and barriers from the context of the Swedish manufacturing industry. A literature review of previously established drivers and barriers is used to map out the empirical findings and thereby identify potential gaps between the current body of literature and drivers and barriers from a Swedish manufacturing context.

The findings of the study suggest that quality issues continue to be one of the strongest reshoring drivers. Except for product quality, quality is also connected to host country’s infrastructure, communication and service. The supply chain perspective is a source of several drivers and is identified as a perspective often overlooked in offshoring decisions. Barriers related to firm specifics were more elaborately discussed by the companies, especially concerning calculation of location decision and the need to invest in resources, which allows for a higher level of capacity at the home country facility.

The study develops a structured table of reshoring drivers and barriers which can serve as a base for future research. Future research on the calculation of location decisions is deemed as a crucial step to further understand reshoring and aid companies in the decision-making process.

The drivers and barriers identified in the study can give practitioners insight into reshoring from the perspective of the Swedish manufacturing industry and thus aid in future manufacturing location decisions. The table of drivers and barriers can also be important to understand how Sweden can strengthen its competitive advantage and motivate more companies to reshore manufacturing.

This is one of only few papers from the Nordic countries and also one of few case studies examining reshoring in manufacturing companies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between contingency factors and reshoring drivers in the US textile and apparel industry.

Secondary data on the reshoring drivers and contingency factors for 140 US textile and apparel companies are analyzed using analysis of proportions.

The findings show that total annual revenue is significantly related to the reshoring driver of skilled workforce. No significant relationships are present between reshoring drivers and the region of the world reshored from not the region of the USA from which a company operates. There is a significant relationship between market segment and the reshoring driver of manufacturing process. The US production category (reshored, FDI, or kept from offshoring) exhibits a significant relationship with sustainability-related and cost-related reshoring drivers. Quality is a significant driver for reshoring from 2010 to 2016, although decreasing as a reported reason over that time period.

Limitations include a focus on one industry, the lack of information to investigate the differences between companies making captive or outsourced reshoring decisions, and the use of companies who publicly announced reshoring.

This study outlines the relationships between contingency factors and reshoring drivers. The results provide companies with information about resources that will be demand (e.g. skilled workers) as well as policies and regulations that may be developed to address concerns such as sustainability.

This study adds to the limited number of studies on the relationships between contingency factors and reshoring drivers and contributes to the quantitative research on reshoring drivers.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the rather blurry concept of reshoring and its main drivers and barriers. At the same time, the paper seeks to provide a much-needed overview of the scientific theories used in previous research on reshoring.

The paper gathers information from previous published research. Data were collected through a systematic literature review on “reshoring” using primarily qualitative research techniques. Through a structured keyword search and subsequent elimination of papers, 22 peer-reviewed journal papers made it into the final review.

There is currently no consensus on the definition or “theory of reshoring”. Drivers and barriers could be grouped into five different sets of dynamics: global competitive dynamics, home country, host country, supply chain and firm-specific.

Researchers need to consider the future development of the field and work toward an accepted terminology. Models about reshoring decisions need to include several decision criteria, which goes beyond financial metrics.

Practitioners need to carefully consider the decision to reshore as to not make rushed decisions. The final decision needs to consider factors such as quality, risk and brand reputation.

The paper is, to authors’ knowledge, the first overview of earlier research in a research journal. It provides a much-needed overview of an emerging field that can hold great importance for both future research and production. The constructed framework structures the dynamics (drivers and barriers) associated with reshoring.

This paper aims to theorize on the internationalization process model to explain cases of manufacturing reshoring as decisions taken to manage risk when internationalizing.

The paper is of a conceptual nature. Building on the logic of the internationalization process model, the authors extend previous work by focusing on firms’ risk perception (determined by commitment, knowledge and uncertainty as key variables) to explain also reshoring decisions.

Four propositions were developed, concerning the likelihood of firms to make manufacturing reshoring decisions. The first two propositions deal with the effects of new risk contingencies, and the other two refer specifically to the effects of managerial perceptions of three different typologies of risk, namely, host-country, home-country and reshoring-process specific risk.

While reshoring has been discussed mainly on the basis of economic arguments, this paper offers an alternative, behavioural view of this phenomenon as a strategic risk-management process. Therefore, it offers initial steps to theorize about reshoring from a risk-management perspective and, in doing so, opens up a number of avenues for future research.

The aim of this paper is to analyze and classify research that has been conducted on manufacturing reshoring, i.e. the decision to bring back to the home country production activities earlier offshored, independently of the governance mode (insourcing vs outsourcing). Consequently, the paper also aims at providing avenues for future research and to highlight the distinct value of studying manufacturing reshoring either per se or in combination with other constructs of the international business tradition.

A set of 57 carefully selected articles on manufacturing reshoring published in international journals or books indexed on Scopus in the past 10 years was systematically analyzed based on the “5Ws and 1H” (who-what-where-when-why and how) set of questions.

The authors’ work shows a certain convergence among authors regarding what reshoring is and what its key features and motivations are. In contrast, other related aspects, such as the decision-making and implementation processes, are comparatively less understood.

As manufacturing reshoring is a “recent” topic, for some of its aspects, only exploratory research is available to date, limiting the authors’ possibility to either characterize it in a more exhaustive way or highlight well-established patterns.

The paper demonstrates that studying reshoring will indeed contribute to expanding our understanding of internationalization processes and strategies in general and of production internationalization specifically. While past studies have argued that the learning derived from international experience would permit firms to overcome their unfamiliarity with new business environments, reshoring might show that this outcome is not necessarily certain. Rather, firms might not be able to overcome obstacles because of internationalization or they might realize that attempting to do so is not desirable, e.g. because of excessive risk or changes in the firm’s strategic priorities.

From a societal point of view, the present research underlines that reshoring can be part of that re-industrialization policy that many Western countries include in their economic agenda – yet, its impact on employment should not be overestimated, as often relocation is only in regard to some product lines. At the same time, there might be an intimate relationship between reshoring and the various forms of technological innovations applied to manufacturing – which has become popularly labeled as “Industry 4.0”.

Literature reviews proposed until now usually paid almost exclusive attention to motivations driving this phenomenon. This paper offers a broader and more comprehensive examination of the extant knowledge of manufacturing reshoring and identifies the main unresolved issues and knowledge gaps, which future research should investigate.

Reshoring, whether concerning back-reshoring or near-reshoring, is a quite recent phenomenon. Despite the economic and political interest of this topic, research questioning determinants and results of reshoring remain rare. The purpose of this paper is to help people to better understand reasons for reshoring.

To better understand reasons for near-reshoring, the authors conducted a study among 215 French firms in spring 2016, including 197 of them sourcing manufactured goods from China.

Near-reshoring is a recent but growing phenomenon: almost half of the companies sourcing in China chose over the past few years to near-reshore the supply of certain products initially purchased in China, and 10 per cent plan to do so soon. The authors determine main motives for near-reshoring and show that companies having reshored are very satisfied in terms of product quality, responsiveness between order and delivery, responsiveness between design and production, and in terms of total cost of ownership too.

Despite the economic and political interest of the topic of reshoring, research questioning determinants and results of reshoring remains rare.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of company decisions to reshore manufacturing activities on employee citizenship behaviors (OCBs). The research considers both company motives for the reshoring decision perceived by employees and gratitude felt toward the organization as antecedents to OCBs.

The authors conducted a survey based on a sample of employees belonging to an Italian manufacturing company that had implemented a reshoring decision.

The employee attributions of intrinsic motives for reshoring and gratitude are shown to positively affect OCBs. Specifically, intrinsic motives influence both OCBIs and OCBOs through the mediating role of gratitude felt by employees, whereas extrinsic motives do not affect, directly or indirectly through mediation of gratitude, OCBs.

The research illustrates the importance of managing internal communications to employees of company motives for reshoring, which ultimately affect employee gratitude and OCBs.

The research contributes to the knowledge of the effects of reshoring on employees and their relationships with the firms and co-workers and introduces a new area for inquiry.