Methodology

The monitoring activities cover three main elements: media monitoring of reshoring cases, relevant research articles / reports and policy initiatives. 

Media monitoring is aimed at finding evidence of reshoring decisions implemented in EU-located companies. Such evidence is retrieved from a wide variety of sources: press releases, major daily national newspapers, local papers, business press, broadcast websites (e.g., BBC online) and news agencies. Each case is described in terms of the company involved, the date of announcement of the reshoring initiative, the sector, the offshore country and the new location the activity is reshored to. For each case of reshoring identified in the press, further information (e.g., NACE code, impact on employment) is collected by the research team when available. Following a quality assurance check, the record is approved and uploaded to the database.

The second monitoring activity is performed with respect to research documents, i.e., academic articles and other documents (e.g., reports, white papers) produced by international and national organizations (e.g., Eurostat, OECD, UNCTAD, US Federal Reserve), consulting companies (e.g. Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey) and other practitioner organizations. This information will be stored in a specific database. Research monitoring will consider the following sources in English: academic databases (e.g. Elsevier’s Scopus and ISI Web of Knowledge), proceedings of the most relevant international conferences in international business (e.g., Academy of International Business) and operations management fields (e.g., European Operation Management Association and International Purchasing and Supply Education and Research Association), specialized Internet sites (e.g. http://www.entreprises.gouv.fr/relocaliser and http://www.reshorenow.org/).

The third monitoring activity concerns policy, i.e., legislation implemented either at the national or EU level or policy documents with a relevance for reshoring. Policy monitoring activity will be based on media and research documents activities already described. This material will be made available in the ‘reference material’ database.