Doing the right thing or doing things right: what is better for a successful manufacturing reshoring?

The article concerns the revision of earlier decisions to offshore production activities (so called relocation of second degree); more specifically it is focused on the reshoring (also referred as relocation to the home country, back-reshoring or back-shoring). The research aims are to investigate what types of mistakes occur along the decision-making and implementation process and how they affect the outcome, in terms of success or failure, of a relocation strategy. A multiple case study involving four companies in the fashion industry from Portugal and Italy was conducted. The cross-case analysis allowed to differentiate decision-making mistakes from implementation ones and to assess differences and similarities among the cases in terms of content of the relocation, drivers and outcomes. The research contributes to previous literature on reshoring by bringing evidence of different types of mistakes to be considered, thus requiring further conceptualization of the reshoring process. Managers and entrepreneurs should consider the importance of doing the things right also during the implementation, too often underestimated. The present article is the first one in the reshoring literature bringing evidence of cases of failure in the relocation decisions and discriminating among different kinds of mistakes.

Automated summary

The article examines the errors in relocation decisions and their impact on the success or failure of strategies, conducting a multiple case study to differentiate between decision-making and implementation mistakes, contributing to reshoring literature by providing evidence of various types of errors and emphasizing the importance of proper implementation.