Abstract:
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The paper’s interest arises thanks to the intention of fulfilling a gap occasioned by the lack of
research, didactically and empirically, on solving problems concerning dynamics within the Supply
Chain. Globalization has promoted an environment that extent and scarce competitiveness, leading
companies to move their manufacturing and production tasks away and to take advantages from every
location to beat competitors around the world.
Now that globalization is settled to stay and even small and medium enterprises have performed
offshoring or outsourcing activities to reduce their costs, a new era to stand out has arisen for
companies. Enterprises search for new manners to be distinct than competitors and gain share in
their markets. As a consequence, during the last years, a new phenomenon, known as reshoring, has
been noticed mainly in US and partly in Germany, UK and Italy. The blank in the researches of
reshoring activities is more obvious in Europe, especially in Sweden. Therefore, this paper seeks
the answer to ‘How do companies with headquarters in Sweden relocate activities?’ in order to
verify the existence of any trend, or even the appearance of this new trend regarding location
decisions.
The study of eight companies has enabled to collect information about companies that are
implementing reshoring processes and which were the reasons that guided them to perform the way
they did. As the definition of reshoring processes refers to cases where a previous offshoring
process has been developed, the study of reshoring is not realized in isolation. It has been
collected information regarding the reasons why some companies undertook offshoring processes in
the past and how the outcome of that strategy is associated to the current phenomenon. Furthermore,
it has been identified the reasons that explain why some companies did not carry out offshoring
processes in the past and why those that did have been reshoring in recent years. It has emerged
the presence of the Servicification process, which could clarify the manufacturing climate and
affect companies’ location decisions in Sweden. In short, the gathering of information has enabled
to build an overall picture of the evolution of offshoring and reshoring in the Swedish Industry in
terms of size and the causes of this evolution, with the appearance of a possible Regionalization
trend in a long-term scenario.
The main conclusion is that in the hunt of companies to achieve a right mix of offshore and in-home
activities, a reshoring movement is happening between, but it is accompanied by the remaining
offshoring trend, which is much larger. Although small, reshoring exists and the main key variables
to control the phenomenon are lower costs, proximity to markets, core competences protection and
concentration of facilities. The most attractive countries for Swedish companies as a destination
to relocate their activities seem to be countries in Eastern Europe. Companies do not perceive the
phenomenon as a trend neither they refer to those movements as ‘reshoring’ due to the probable bad
feelings and bad popularity that brings ‘coming back’. |