Organisational antecedents of mass customization capability

The need to transform the organisation for mass customisation has long been recognized in literature, but the discussion has largely relied on anecdotal evidence or case studies and has limitedly taken advantage of insights from organisation theory. We draw on organisational information-processing theory to relate mass customisation capability (MCC) to four organisation-design strategies aimed at either increasing the organisation’s information-processing capacity or decreasing its information-processing need. We test the hypothesized relationships using a sample of 238 manufacturing plants from three industries and eight countries and find that MCC is positively related to task self-containment, environmental management, and lateral relations use.