Manufacturing back-reshoring

At 2.00 p.m.
Venue: Room 11, Department of Sociology and Social Research – via Verdi 26, Trento

Speaker

• Prof. Luciano Fratocchi – University of L’Aquila

Abstract 

Over the past few years, the use of terms such as “on-shoring”, “re-shoring”, “home-shoring”, and “back-shoring” has multiplied dramatically, especially in economic journalism and in consulting firms’ white papers. In turn, policy-makers have seen back-shoring strategies as ways to bring jobs back home during the global crisis. The topic has attracted academic attention (mainly in the Supply chain management field of study), but reliable and quantitative evidence on the extent of the back-shoring phenomenon is scant and often of anecdotal nature. Moreover, the characterisation of this evidence, as well as its role within the firms’ internationalisation process, remains unclear. 

The first aim of the seminar is to propose a a literature-grounded definition of manufacturing back-reshoring. In so doing, differences  with other phenomena already analysed by international business and international operations management scholars (e.g. “de-internationalisation”, “international divestment” and “return relocation”) will be discussed. 
The second aim of the seminar is to characterize the investigated phenomenon as a possible step of the firm’s internationalisation strategy. 
The third aim is to discuss motivations induce companies to move their (out-/in-sourced) manufacturing activities back in the home country. More specifically, motivations belonging to extant literature will be presented and analysed. 

Finally, evidence of the dataset Uni CLUB MoRe reshoring (a joint research group promoted by scholars of the following Universities: Catania, L’Aquila, Udine, Bologna, Modena & Reggio Emilia) will be presented.