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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 report an investigation of local sustainable production in Australia and Sweden aimed at exploring the factors contributing to survival and competitiveness of manufacturing companies.

In Australia, six companies were studied in 2010, with comparisons being made with three of them from earlier projects. In Sweden, eight manufacturing companies were studied on two occasions 30 years apart, in 1980 and 2010. To provide a valid comparative perspective a common format for data collection and analysis was used.

There has been a shift in the nature of competition in both Sweden and Australia due to an increasing complexity of the global business environment as well as changes in technology and customer expectations. Despite the differences in country context, the findings suggest that all the manufacturing companies have a good awareness of the elements of the market environment and the relationships with their competitive strategy. However, in general, the Swedish companies have more experience of managing the risks and benefits from operating in the international environment.

The results of the research are based on a relatively small sample of case companies in a limited number of industrial sectors. There are methodology implications for future research in the area.

The research results have practical implications for the manufacturing industry, especially for companies operating in a competitive international environment.

The paper is based on original case research and comparative analysis of data from different geographical contexts. It contributes to both theory and management practice about the strategic resources, decision choices, competitive environments and firm values needed to address external market demands as well as in building internal capabilities.

Within the framework of the Swedish Manufacturing Strategy Project a panel study of 66 manufacturing business units has been made. These 66 companies participated in a questionnairebased study performed both in 1986 and in 1989. The results showed that the companies have tended to consolidate their positions in existing markets rather than put emphasis on efforts to enter new markets. The competitive means used to support this strategic direction are in 1989 even more biased towards high quality products, reliable deliveries and aspects of flexibility. The importance of low price as a competitive means has been dramatically reduced. This strategic emphasis has even more accentuated the concern for personnel issues within manufacturing. In order to create the competitive advantage depicted, great emphasis is put on decentralisation of the organisational structure at the plant level.

Based on an empirical study of 184 Swedish manufacturers. Provides an operationalization of manufacturing strategy. Bases the definition of a manufacturing strategy on the competitive means which the business units emphasize to compete on the market, and the nature of manufacturing objectives. Formulates and tests hypotheses within areas of manufacturing strategy that have been identified as missing themes in the literature. Shows that companies that have a manufacturing strategy are significantly more profitable than those without one. They are also significantly better in competing with dependable deliveries. Argues that companies with a manufacturing strategy, regardless of the direction of the strategy, have identified quality programmes and other preventive actions as being fundamental issues in manufacturing. Thus gives support to the research that suggests that competitive priorities should be sequentially applied in manufacturing.

This paper aims to contribute to the debate concerning the asserted end of the globalization process.

This paper is a description of the evolution of all Swedish MNEs, the 50 largest companies and the ten truly global MNEs, building on data compiled by the authors, mainly from annual reports.

The largest Swedish MNEs have continued to globalize and have at the same time improved their financial performance during the period of study, 2010-2016.

The proposition that multinationals are heading home cannot be confirmed in the Swedish case. There is therefore a need to compare Swedish experiences with other national examples to better generalize the findings.

The political decisions regarding external trade and foreign direct investment should support continuous liberalization and facilitation of cross-border economic interaction.

As Swedish MNEs are more globalized than the average in advanced economies, this study offers insight into the contemporary internationalization process.

Major decisions in manufacturing have often been treated as a management task. Investments and changes in manufacturing have become more complex in the last few decades. This implies that more functions and individuals have to be involved in the decision‐making processes. The final decision, when investments are made in manufacturing, is either the result of many decisions influenced by the individuals, or on the basis of advice from individuals who have no formal power to make decisions. To ensure that the decisions made are strategically connected, manufacturing strategies and goals have to be broken down to, and understood by, the functions and levels that influence the decisions. A study of 125 manufacturing units in Sweden shows that companies with a manufacturing strategy break down goals and strategies to lower levels than companies without a manufacturing strategy. The companies having a manufacturing strategy also plan manufacturing on longer terms, are more active in future plans and are less concerned about short‐term goals when they invest in manufacturing technology.

The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent, and in what ways, various types of bank support improve small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) export performance. It contributes to bank marketing and international marketing theory and practice by clarifying bank contributions to SME export performance at the firm level.

The study method is an on-site survey, encompassing 135 manufacturing Swedish SMEs. Five hypotheses are tested using ordinary least squares regression.

The higher the export performance, the greater the importance attributed to bank funding of international business. The importance of transaction and/or currency services provided by banks for SMEs’ ability to do business abroad was confirmed, but with the important limitation that the effect diminishes as the number of markets increases. Furthermore, the results indicate that SMEs with low export performance attach a high importance to the advisory services that banks can offer regarding international business. No significant results for knowledge sharing or support from bank contacts were found.

SME managers are encouraged to view banks as potential providers of a diverse set of value-added resources while taking into consideration that some banks will have more developed resources and support policies than others. The study results also assist banks in building effective strategies for enhancing their relationships with SME clients, as it provides detailed information on how SMEs relate different kinds of bank services to their export performance.

As the first paper to describe SME-perceived relationships between different bank services and export performance, this study informs bank marketing and international marketing theory about bank contributions to SME internationalisation.

To report a recently completed study on enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation in Korean manufacturing firms.Design/methodology/approach – An online survey was conducted (with e‐mail invitation and telephone call reminder) to collect data from 306 Korean manufacturing firms.Findings – This study presents the issues related to ERP implementation in Korean manufacturing firms, including pre‐implementation activities, implementation experiences, ERP system configuration, benefits, and future direction. Additionally, the results are compared to those results from previous studies on US and Swedish manufacturing firms.Research limitations/implications – The study focused on one industry in one Asian country which perhaps limits the application of its generalized results to other industries or other Asian countries.Practical implications – The results of this study present and discuss both similarities and differences in ERP implementation issues among Korean, US, and Swedish manufacturing firms.Originality/value – This research is the first empirical study on the issues related to ERP implementation in manufacturing firms in the Asia/Pacific region. It is also the first study providing comparison results regarding ERP implementation in manufacturing firms in Asian, North American, and European countries.

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.

This research investigates performance determinants of service sector foreign-owned subsidiaries located in an emerging market. The focus is on the two dimensions of organizational networks (Who do you know?) and competencies (What do you know?).

Data were collected via a large-scale survey of managing directors located in the midrange emerging economy of Taiwan. The data are analyzed using partial least squares structured equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) techniques.

The results show the importance of intraorganizational network strength as a key determinant of subsidiary performance, and that combinations of interorganizational network strength and competencies can determine performance in several subsidiaries.

This article offers new insights by testing a theoretical framework based on network perspective and the competence-based view of the firm in an emerging market context. It also offers an additional twist by employing symmetric (PLS-SEM) and nonsymmetric (fsQCA) methods to test the framework. This allows to arrive at robust conclusions about the complementarity and substitutability of the applied theories. This research also contributes to the current literature by providing fine-grained insights into the nature and impact of competencies and networks. It is also one of the few studies to focus specifically on service sector subsidiaries.