Key success factors for organizational innovation in the fashion industry

Abstract

In the current phase of globalization, the fashion industry is an important sector where firm strategies are frequently oriented towards product personalization - more than product customization - with a reduced price. The fashion industry relates to the ability to provide customized products or services through flexible processes in high volume and at a reasonably low cost, which are currently key variables for the fashion supply chain. Performance concepts - which usually refer to three pillars, i.e., economic, environmental and social ones - are new paradigms in this industrial sector, namely "sustainable" mass customization. This paper proposes a multi-criteria methodological approach for evaluating the performance of the fashion industry based on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and the Analytic Network Process (ANP), called 'MAB' - Multi-criteria Assessment Balanced Scorecard. Firstly, key performance indicators (KPIs) are evaluated in order to assess the performance level of a typical fashion industry. The development of an index system and methods is aimed to form a set of useful tools for policy-makers to facilitate the transformation of an industrial development mode and support the performance of the fashion industry. © 2013 Felice and Petrillo.