A decisional framework for manufacturing relocation: Consolidating and expanding the reshoring debate

Abstract

With respect to the increasing trend of companies reversing or modifying previous offshoring decisions, research on manufacturing relocation has gained momentum over the past decade. However, despite increasing efforts in this field, the general understanding of relocation still lacks maturity, with numerous conflicting results and arguments from a variety of industrial and regional contexts that are yet to be consolidated. This study uses a systematic literature review method to address this lack of consolidation, contributing to academia in three ways. First, this paper presents a novel decisional framework that involves all of the relevant aspects of a relocation decision based on 158 reviewed papers, laying a solid foundation for theoretical, conceptual and empirical development. Second, it consolidates and disambiguates all of the relevant terminologies used in relocation debates, providing proper logical clarification. Third, we identify 25 gaps in the research across all decisional aspects and propose three integrated research avenues that are critical to the accumulation of knowledge.