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Oper Manag Res (2016) 9:102116 DOI 10.1007/s12063-016-0113-0
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Web End = Exploring the reshoring and insourcing decision making process: toward an agenda for future research
Lydia Bals1,2 & Jon F. Kirchoff3 & Kai Foerstl4
Received: 3 January 2016 /Revised: 24 May 2016 /Accepted: 1 June 2016 /Published online: 15 June 2016 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract The topics of reshoring and insourcing have recently become more widely discussed among operations management and international business scholars and managers, as some firms are revoking their offshoring and outsourcing decisions. This research focuses on and clarifies the decision making processes related to the two distinct, yet closely related phenomena of reshoring and insourcing. It presents a conceptual framework of all theoretically possible reshoring and insourcing decisions, illustrated in its applicability by a review of the United States and German business press. Then four future research avenues are developed as part of an overall decision making framework together with an overview of specific research questions for this emergent field. Further research avenues include the need to differentiate between reshoring/insourcing as strategic direction or reaction to failure, studying organizational readiness in addition to decision drivers, improve coverage of the implementation stage and explore further contingency factors such as technological advancement as well as to focus on decision makers as the unit of analysis.
Keywords Reshoring . Insourcing . Research agenda . Offshoring . Outsourcing . Backshoring
1 Introduction
Outsourcing and offshoring have been important business strategies since the early 1990s and continue to be of significant practical and scholarly interest (Feenstra 1998; Blinder 2006; Htnen and Eriksson 2009; Bals et al. 2013). Outsourcing refers to moving internal activities outside of the company (Ellram et al. 2008) and offshoring refers to the geographical dimension of where to perform such activities, ranging from captive offshoring (make) to offshore outsourcing (buy) options (Jahns et al. 2006). In the past, make-or-buy decisions often resulted in outsourcing to reduce costs and transfer risks and responsibilities to suppliers located offshore (Manuj and Mentzer 2008). More recently, however, studies suggest that managers are increasingly reconsidering some previous outsourcing and offshoring decisions causing them to revoke some of these (McIvor 2013; Ellram 2013), thus reshaping their supply chains.
Firms decisions to...