Global footprint of Nordic manufacturing firms: An explorative archive study

Purpose A growing research trend has recently focused on movements of manufacturing across regional boundaries through offshoring, backshoring, reshoring and nearshoring. This approach depicts only a partial picture of what is going on in terms of global manufacturing strategies. More attention is required to understanding the various forms of building the global manufacturing footprints of firms in different manufacturing industries under different contingencies. The purpose of this paper is to compare the direct capital expenditures of large Nordic manufacturing firms in various parts of the world to other forms of building global presence, i.e. R&D expenditures and acquisitions and divestments. Design/methodology/approach We used archival research to study the different globalisation patterns of 40 large Nordic manufacturing firms, over the period of 2005-2017. Ten largest manufacturing firms were included from each of the four Nordic countries, i.e. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The sources of data included LexisNexis news database, company financials and EU R&D scoreboard. For each of the 40 manufacturing firms included in the study, over the 12-year analysis period, data was collected to compare the direct capital expenditure, R&D expenditure, and acquisitions and divestments. Findings The research results indicate considerable differences in the way manufacturing firms develop their global footprints. Comparisons are made to highlight differences across industries. Illustrative case studies are provided and future research proposals given to enrich existing research on globalisation of Nordic manufacturing.