Taking stock of prior research on the organizational capabilities for mass customization

The means to develop mass-customization capability (MCC), including the or-ganization capabilities that enable MCC, have extensively been investigated in the past. Very recently, this stream of research has borrowed the notion of capability hierarchy from the strategy literature. Yet, several capability hierarchies had im-plicitly been proposed before, since early 2000s, and a systematic review of this body of knowledge is still missing. To fill this gap, this paper begins with pro-posing a two-dimensional framework that integrates the two different ways in which the notion of capability hierarchy has been conceptualized in the strategy literature. Subsequently, the paper uses this framework to classify prior research findings on the links between MCC and other organizational capabilities, with the twofold purpose of taking stock of the available knowledge and providing direc-tions for future research. The results of this classification also help reconcile seemingly conflicting findings in the extant literature.