Die Bedeutung der Struktur von Produktionsprozessen bei den Offshoring- und Backshoringaktivitäten deutscher Unternehmen

Since the middle of the 1990s many German companies have relocated parts of their production abroad (offshoring). This development has been caused on the one hand by innovations in information and communication technologies that are supported by the liberalization of the international trade, and on the other hand by the reduction of transportation costs due to technological development. Through relocation, companies can benefit from the country-specific institutions. Further, they can also improve their cost structure and their market position. However the offshoring decision is, in addition to the wage differentials and the country-specific factors, also influenced by the characteristics of the production processes. So far, this fact has been considered only in theoretical approaches.The relocation of parts of the production chain abroad is not an irreversible process. Thus, since the end of the 1990s, a new trend can be observed, namely the return back to the domestic country (backshoring). Pre-existing studies see backshoring mainly as a “failure” of the foreign investment, supposedly conditioned by an overhasty and biased offshoring decision. However, this negative view of backshoring neglects the fact that business environments are changeable over time, so that under the changed circumstances it can be more beneficial to produce in the domestic country again. Furthermore, pre-existing surveys fail to consider the impact of the characteristics of the production chain on the backshoring activities of companies. An econometric estimation of this correlation also seems to be missing. On the basis of the introduced research gaps, the goal of this doctoral thesis is to empirically estimate the factors of offshoring and backshoring for German industrial firms. The focus of the research is therefore on the characteristics of the production chain and their impact on the offshoring and backshoring activities of German companies. In order to examine the effect of production-specific factors on the choice of production location, a survey of German firms has been conducted, and the collected specific enterprise data is used for the empirical estimations