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Introduction
Location decisions of manufacturing firms are among the most debated topics in the international business (IB) and supply chain management (SCM) fields, as recently showed by Jain et al. (2016). Boosted by opportunities created by increasing globalization, these decisions generally concern offshoring strategies, often coupled with outsourcing decisions (Liesch et al. , 2012). While the literature on offshoring has largely focused on the expansion patterns (Jahns et al. , 2006) and the characterization, antecedents and performance implications of the phenomenon (Schmeisser, 2013), it has also emphasized that the process is not irreversible (Antelo and Bru, 2010; Kotabe et al. , 2008). Challenges in the management of globally extended value chains and changes in the relative attractiveness of locations can lead firms to reconsider their offshored production location decisions.
In the past few years, both large multinational companies (MNCs) and numerous small enterprises operating in different industries have decided to (at least partially) reverse their previous manufacturing offshoring decisions and have brought their production activities back home, independently of the adopted governance mode (insourcing vs outsourcing). This phenomenon has often been referred to as manufacturing reshoring, although other terms have been used as well (e.g. backshoring, back-reshoring, inshoring, back-sourcing and onshoring). In this paper, we prefer to use the term manufacturing reshoring, as it is the most diffused among scholars and practitioners. However, we note that this term is often adopted to indicate different concepts[1].
Interest in manufacturing reshoring rose initially among practitioners; more recently, it has gained momentum among scholars (Fratocchi et al. , 2015; Fratocchi et al. , 2016; Stentoft et al. , 2016c) and policymakers (De Backer et al. , 2016; Guenther, 2012; Livesey, 2012). In light of the rapidly increasing amount of publications on the topic, some attempts to summarize the extant literature were conducted. Such attempts may be divided into two main categories. The first is characterized by specific issues:
1. for instance, Fratocchi et al. (2015, 2014a, 2014b) summarize the extant literature in terms of reshoring conceptualization; and
2. while Foerstl et al. (2016), Fratocchi et al. (2016), Srai and Ané (2016) and Stentoft et al. (2016c) focus exclusively on reshoring motivations.
The second category contains systematic literature reviews having a wider approach to address issues such as...