Tuotannon siirtojen taloudelliset vaikutukset – Tilastollinen pitkittäistutkimus suomalaisista valmistavista teollisuusyrityksistä

Manufacturing companies have actively been looking for new manufacturing locations throughout the last decades, for instance, to enter new markets, to decrease production costs and to increase flexibility to customers’ demands. The importance of manufacturing for the economy is significant because of jobs and tax incomes. The decisions to relocate production have been extensively studied in earlier research literature. This thesis aims to fill a gap in the production relocation research by answering the following research questions: What kinds of factors characterize the companies that are moving their production? and What are the financial effects of production movements? The study combines survey data and secondary financial data to analyze manufacturing relocation activities of 229 Finnish manufacturing companies between 2010 and 2015. The structure of the thesis follows the research process. First, the background of the research and data are investigated to formulate the research questions. The second chapter defines the key concepts and constructs propositions based on the reviewed literature. The chapter on research methodology and data builds the methodological base for the analysis. The key statistical tools, operationalization of theoretical concepts and descriptive statistics are examined. The analysis and results are divided according to the research questions. First, the characteristics of production movements are analyzed using logistic regression analysis and second, the analysis of the performance effects is carried out utilizing the propensity score method. The last chapter inferences the results from the empirical and theoretical perspectives and gives suggestions for further research. The most important finding is a positive relationship between production movement activity and financial performance. Companies with movement activities have been able to maintain their profitability better than companies in their control groups with no movements during a weak economic cycle. The results show that companies who are moving production to achieve cost efficiency or improvements in production and supply chain are not only more profitable but also able to grow. The study could not find statistically significant effects of production movements on operational working capital. A weak evidence was found to point out that less capital-intensive companies would be more active in production movements. However, an effect between financial slack and movement activity was not found. An overall conclusion is that production movements have a very important role in manufacturing strategy and maintaining profitability of Finnish manufacturing companies. Investigating more specific mechanisms behind the positive effects needs more research in the future