Interorganizational enablers of mass customization: A literature review

The organizational capability of mass customization that allows satisfying the customer’s idiosyncratic needs without considerable trade-offs in cost, delivery, and quality continues to be a fundamental capability aimed by many companies. Companies are open systems that continuously exchange inputs and outputs with the external environment; thus, interorganizational relationships they establish with their environment could influence their organizational capabilities. Therefore, companies aiming for mass customization would take advantage of understanding the interorganizational variables that influence mass-customization capability and how these variables impact this capability. The present chapter systematically analyzes the interorganizational variables that effect mass-customization capability, provides an overview of previous research, and proposes future research opportunities on this topic.