Strategic Capabilities to Manage High-Variety Production Environments: The Role of Underlying Activities and Organizational Resources

Abstract

Product offerings (PO) with a high number of product variants have become a standard in today’s industrial manufacturing sector and are also becoming increasingly popular in business-to-consumer markets. Increasingly, more companies pursue such a strategy as they hope to benefit from the competitive advantage that arises from the opportunity to address every customer individually. However, adapting a respective business model (BM) for high-variety (HV) production demands profound organizational change. Existing research suggests that companies have to develop certain strategic capabilities when implementing such business strategies. Still, most studies lack a sufficient level of detail in the discussion of these strategic capabilities and remain vague regarding underlying management activities and organizational resources. With this study, we provide more detailed definitions of the strategic capabilities of mass customization. Furthermore, we identify a comprehensive set of underlying management activities and organizational resources and thereby facilitate the realization of the strategic capabilities for practitioners.