Are supply chains global or regional?

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the following questions: Are supply chains global or regional? What are the performance implications for firms? Design/methodology/approach - This paper classifies 183 large North American firms into home-region oriented, host-region oriented, bi-regional, and global firms by using geographic distributions of their upstream and downstream activities. The performance implications of the regional supply chains of a broader set of 273 firms by using Tobin's Q and data on intra-regional sales or assets are further evaluated. Findings - It is found that the evidence to support the regional nature of supply chains - that is, over 85 percent of firms in our sample - have their supply chains within North America. The paper also finds that a regional focus of firms in terms of sales contributes to improved performance as measured by Tobin's Q. Originality/value - The regionalization perspective proposed by Rugman and Verbeke to develop and test the regional nature of supply chains is applied.