What do we know about manufacturing reshoring

Purpose – 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 aims also 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. Design/methodology/approach – A set of 57 carefully selected articles on manufacturing reshoring published in international journals or books indexed on Scopus in the last 10 years is systematically analyzed based on the “5Ws and 1H” (Who-What-Where-When-Why and How) set of questions. Findings – Our work shows a certain convergence among authors regarding what reshoring is, what its key features and motivations are. In contrast, other related aspects, such as the decision making and implementation processes, are comparatively less understood. Research limitations/implications – As manufacturing reshoring is a “recent” topic, for some of its aspects, only exploratory research is available to date, limiting our possibility to either characterize it in a more exhaustive way, or highlight well-established patterns. Practical implications – 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 due to internationalization or they might realize that attempting to do so is not desirable, e.g., due to excessive risk or changes in the firm’s strategic priorities. Originality/Value – 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.