Manufacturing reshoring and sustainable development goals: A home versus host country perspective

Abstract

After decades of offshoring their manufacturing activities, an increasing number of companies are revising their location strategies and implementing reshoring decisions, including backshoring (relocation in the home country) and nearshoring (relocation in the home region) alternatives. It has been recognized that reshoring strategies are consistent with the sustainable production approach, since they allow companies to produce goods in a manner that is socially beneficial, economically viable, and environmentally less harmful over the whole life cycle of those goods. Additionally, there are early indications that reshoring can also promote and support sustainable consumption approaches. Consequently, reshoring has a wide range of impacts in both the home and the host countries, also in terms of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, this topic has received little attention in the extant reshoring literature. This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion by adopting a two-step approach. Initially, we analyze the very few contributions available on this topic; then, we identify and discuss which of the 17 SDGs are impacted by reshoring decisions at both the home and the host country level. It emerges that reshoring decisions have several and differentiated impacts in terms of SDGs. In general, these impacts are positive for home countries and negative for host ones. For this reason, a trade-off emerges when a single relocation decision is taken and implemented. Based on this evidence, implications for scholars, managers and policy makers are presented and discussed.