EXPLORING THE RESHORING PROCESS: ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE THROUGH PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CASE STUDIES

Over the last decade, reshoring has increasingly attracted the attention of practitioners, policy makers and scholars. Case studies have been popular in this research stream, given its still exploratory stage. Although no accumulation effort has been made, thus missing the opportunity to build new theory from the insights gained in previous disconnected research. Moreover, while a significant number of articles have analysed drivers, locations and activities involved in reshoring decisions, the decision-making and implementation processes (i.e., how to reshore) still lack empirical analyses. decision-making, that have proved to be relevant in the case of offshoring and reshoring decisions. Therefore, the main goal that represent the red thread connecting the three essays presented in this dissertation is overcoming the frontier reached in previous literature, as well as generating relevant practical advice, by offering new insights into the reshoring process; taking into account all its characterizing elements and phases, their connections and by shedding light on the most obscure ones, namely decision-making and implementation. Accordingly, the dissertation develops along three essays, each one taking the research one step further towards the goal achievement. The first essay What do we want to know about reshoring: developing a framework through a meta-synthesis reports an analysis of existing research adopting case studies about reshoring and the previous offshoring events, with the aim to advance the knowledge within the field, through an accumulation process. The selected methodology to achieve this purpose is meta-synthesis, a type of meta-analysis applied to the analysis of qualitative data. The analyzed data are retrieved from a sample of 14 articles including cases of offshoring and subsequent reshoring processes. The sample represents the total population of articles published in peer reviewed sources and retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science. By focusing on the findings generated by the original authors, the study allowed to build a comprehensive framework to lead future case study research, as well as to demonstrate the suitability of the meta-synthesis methodology in achieving knowledge accumulation, even if the articles have different characteristics in terms of theoretical perspectives, unit of analysis, number of cases and context. In doing so, this study contributes to the field of reshoring and more widely to the operations and supply chain management field. The second essay A meta-analysis of reshoring case studies: the influence of contingency factors on the relocation decision is built on a meta-analysis of already existing reshoring case studies. They usually provide rich insights through qualitative data, but in this study, they have been codified into quantitative data, thus allowing to make statistical inferences. In total, the 36 cases coming from the same 14 research papers retrieved for the first essay were analysed. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of contingency factors on the offshoring and reshoring drivers. The results show that many factors become contingencies for reshoring, namely company size, industry, market, home country, host country, as well as the previous offshoring decision. The research lays the foundation for the accumulation of results achieved from case studies. Finally, the third essay Reshoring decision-making and implementation: a behavioural perspective, through a multiple case study approach, seeks to gain a deeper knowledge into the how question by shedding light on the phases of the reshoring decision-making and implementation processes, the information collected, the stakeholders involved, and the criticalities faced. Based on the empirical analyses and the use of the behavioural perspective, four original propositions are developed to guide both future research and management practice in this field.