Antecedents, Modes and Effects of Back-Reshoring Strategies: The Experience of Italian Enterprises

The back-reshoring is an emerging phenomenon in the academic literature, representing a frontier for management studies. In a scenario in which most of research on enterprises internationalization has focused on the determinants and the ways in which firms grow abroad, contributions to describe and interpret the choices of relocation of manufacturing activities in the country of origin of the company are not as widespread. The backreshoring, however, has an increasingly important role in enterprises decisions and the antecedents of this strategy that few studies have so far identified are an increase in both the quality of the productions and the conditions of manufacturing flexibility. Based on this theoretical framework, this paper seeks to describe the behaviour of enterprises which have undertaken back-reshoring initiatives. Relating to the cases of some Italian enterprises, it’s possible to identify and interpret, from a management perspective, the determinants that have led to similar strategic decisions, the ways in which back-reshoring has been achieved and, finally, the benefits and problems that have emerged from this process of the international relocation of production.