Since the emergence of reshoring, it has received huge interest and become a hot topic in academia, industry and policy circles. Most extant research has focused on defining the reshoring concept, its synonyms, the trends and the drivers behind reshoring decisions. Recently, the research scope has expanded to the reshoring decision-making process, right-shoring and advanced manufacturing having affected reshoring. However, this line of research is still in its infancy. The reshoring phenomenon and the concept are still not thoroughly understood. The impact of reshoring has been rarely researched. In addition, cross discipline research into the association between reshoring and other fields, such as the role of reshoring or shoring decisions played in global manufacturing strategy and business performance (BP) have remained under-researched. Besides, the entire body of research lacks empirical quantitative data as a methodology to enrich people’s understanding of the practice of reshoring. This research attempts to address these gaps empirically, by mainly focusing on an exploration of the current UK manufacturing reshoring status and the relationship between shoring decisions, competitive priorities and BP. The research develops a framework for reshoring to synthesize the related factors which need to be considered during the decision-making process by following a 360-degree approach. The framework also guides an exploration of the realities of reshoring from the UK perspective. In addition, a theoretical moderation model has been devised from the literature, supported by contingency and congruence theory, to explore the correlation between shoring decisions, competitive priorities and BP, with ten hypotheses built up. This research conducted data collection through a survey and obtained 298 completed responses by UK manufacturers. The analysis is based on 261 reliable responses through descriptive analysis, and hierarchical regressions, by using Excel 2016, PPT 2016 and SPSS 24 tools. From the descriptive analysis results, the research has revealed a clear current status of UK manufacturing reshoring from multiple perspectives including: overview of shoring decisions, strategic realities, operational considerations focusing on competitive priorities and products, impacts on supply chains, and comparisons of BP. Based on the statistical analyses results, six out of the ten hypotheses have been supported, moderation relationships have been discovered to exist among the SC cost and BP, delivery and BP, and flexibility and BP. The results identified that SC cost and delivery are the key competitive priorities to improve BP for the companies who took no shoring decisions; delivery is the key competitive priority to improve BP for the companies who conduct both direct and indirect reshoring; delivery and SC cost are the key competitive priorities to improve BP for the companies who are indirectly reshored; and finally flexibility and SC cost are the key competitive priorities to improve BP for the companies who offshored overseas. With a better understanding of reshoring decisions and their current status in the UK, also a clear role of shoring decisions made among manufacturing strategy and BP, academics can use the results of this research as a foundation for future research, industry practitioners can use it to make more considered reshoring or shoring decisions and develop an appropriate operational capability emphasis aligned with the shoring decision, and policy makers can develop more and suitable polices to further support this trend and revitalize the manufacturing and economics areas of the UK.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:752475 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Li, Di |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/107020/ |
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