Offshoring and nearshoring success: the importance of strategic reasons

In the last decades moving the production abroad has become a common practice for companies willing to take the opportunity of localization advantages in other countries. However, the business performance may not always be positive and it can depend on the target country and the underlying strategic reasons. By means of a sample of 227 Western European companies we analyze the relationship between the strategic reasons to move production abroad and the performance achieved, separately for offshoring and nearshoring contexts. Results show that strategic reasons are actually associated to higher or lower business performance, but the relationships change in nearshoring or offshoring contexts.