Environmental and Social Sustainability in Relocations of Second Degree

Dear Colleagues,

Since the ‘80s, manufacturing companies have implemented offshoring decisions, locating their production and/or sourcing activities in foreign countries, generally in low-cost ones in order to reduce labor and production costs. As noted by Jia and Jiang (2018), scholars have increasingly pointed out this strategy has had several negative impacts on the three pillars of sustainability, as defined according the “triple bottom line” approach (Elkington, 1994); namely, environmental, social, and economic (Strange and Bayley, 2008). More specifically, scholars state that off-shoring and global sourcing decisions are dramatically changing the geographical distribution of environmental impacts (Akyelken and Keller, 2014). At the same time, it has been pointed out that off-shoring and global sourcing decisions may lead to a large increase in income inequality around the world (Milberg, 2008).

After decades of offshoring decisions regarding in- and out-sourced production activities, companies have increasingly reviewed their location strategies. This managerial decision, recognized as “reshoring” (Tate et al, 2014; Gray et al, 2014) and, more recently, as “relocations of second degree” (Barbieri et al, 2019), may be implemented according to three main relocation alternatives (Fratocchi et al, 2014):

1. at the home country (back-shoring)
2. at the home region (near-shoring)
3. in a further away country (further offshoring)

Despite the growing interest of scholars in reshoring strategies (Barbieri et al, 2018), the relationship between such decisions and sustainability is still in its infancy. Specifically, the academic debate arose only recently and focused only on the back-shoring alternative (Orzes and Sarkis 2019; Fratocchi and Di Stefano, 2019). 

Following the Gualandris et al. (2014) assumption that the economic dimension of sustainability is a “prerequisite” for the other two pillars, this Special Issue calls for research contributions that elaborate on the impact of each of the three reshoring alternatives on environmental and social sustainability. The call addresses both theoretical and empirical contributions that analyze the multifaceted interplay of investigated factors. Finally, we welcome insights into industrial policy aiming to attract reshoring initiatives and empirical case studies.

The guest editors invite researchers from academia as well as decision-makers from industry and policy-makers from governmental organizations to submit their research papers. This call is deliberately kept broad in order to address a wide range of topics and methods. Suitable topics include but are not limited to the following:

• the roles that sustainability issues may have on the decision making and implementation processes of reshoring strategies (e.g., motivation, trigger, output, barrier, enabling factors)
• the role of voluntary international standards (e.g., carbon footprint, OHSAS) in relation to relocation initiatives
• the effects of sustainability-based reshoring decisions on the development – or re-development – of a local supply chain
• the possible role of customer behavior in driving relocation decisions in specific industries (e.g., fashion)
• the possible role of home and host countries’ public policies
• the role of stakeholders in the decision making and implementation processes of reshoring initiatives
• the impact of contingent factors (e.g., company size, industry) in influencing the relationship between relocation decision and sustainability
• the role of labour market legislation in the home and host countries
• the role of the entrepreneur in terms of sustainability perception and the connected relocation decision
• the role of circular economy strategies and enabler or effect of relocation decisions
• the impact of skill shortage on implementation of reshoring policy
• the “informal subcontracting and informal employment” use at the home country after the back-shoring decision
• the interplay between environmental and social issue and consequent possible conflicts (e.g., reduction of CO2 emissions vs unemployment in the host country)

References:

Akyelken, N. and Keller, H. (2014), “Framing the nexus of globalisation, logistics and manufacturing in Europe”, Transport Reviews, Vol. 34 No. 6, pp. 674-690.

Barbieri, P., Elia, S., Fratocchi, L., Golini, R., (2019), “Relocation of second degree: Moving towards a new place or returning home?”, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, Vol. 25, Issue 3, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pursup.2018.12.003

Barbieri, P., Ciabuschi, F., Fratocchi, L. and Vignoli, M. (2018), “What do we know about manufacturing reshoring?”, Journal of Global Operations and Strategic Sourcing, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 79-122.

Elkington, J. (1994), “Towards the sustainable corporation: win-win-win business strategies for sustainable development”, California Management Review, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 90-100.

Fratocchi, L., Di Mauro, C., Barbieri, P., Nassimbeni, G. and Zanoni, A. (2014), “When manufacturing moves back: concepts and questions”, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 54-59.

Fratocchi, L., Di Stefano, C., (2019), "Does sustainability matter for reshoring strategies? A literature review", Journal of Global Operations and Strategic Sourcing, 12, pp. 449-476. 10.1108/JGOSS-02-2019-0018.

Gray, J.V., Skowronski, K., Esenduran, G. and Rungtusanatham, M.J. (2013), “The reshoring phenomenon: what supply chain academics ought to know and should do”, Journal of Supply Chain Management, Vol. 49 No. 2, pp. 27-33.

Gualandris, J., Golini, R. and Kalchschmidt, M. (2014), “Do supply management and global sourcing matter for firm sustainability performance? An international study’, supply chain management”, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 258-274.

Jia, F. and Jiang, Y. (2018), “Sustainable global sourcing: a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis”, Sustainability, Vol. 10 No. 3, p. 595.

Milberg, W. (2008), “Shifting sources and uses of profits: Sustaining US financialization with global value chains”, Economy and Society, Vol. 37 No. 3, pp. 420-451.

Orzes, G. and Sarkis, J. (2019), “Reshoring and environmental sustainability: an unexplored relationship?”, Resources Conservation and Recycling, Vol. 141, pp. 481-482.

Strange, T. and Bayley, A. (2008), Sustainable Development. Linking Economy, Society and Environment, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), Paris, France.

Tate,W.L., Ellram, L.M., Schoenherr, T. and Petersen, K.J. (2014), “Global competitive conditions driving the manufacturing location decision”, Business Horizons, Vol. 57 No. 3, pp. 381-390.

Prof. Dr. Luciano Fratocchi
Prof. Dr. Matteo Kalchschmidt
Guest Editors

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• environmental sustainability
• social sustainability
• reshoring
• back-shoring
• near-shoring
• further off-shoring
• relocation of second degree