HRM Policies for Mass Customization

Cipriano Forza () and Fabrizio Salvador ()
Additional contact information
Cipriano Forza: Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Fabrizio Salvador: Instituto de Empresa

Chapter Chapter 12 in Mass Customization: Challenges and Solutions, 2006, pp 251-269 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Management research has been long emphasizing the fundamental contribution of individual competencies to the development of company competences, which thus affect organizational success or failure. To date, the debate over critical individual competences has been almost ignored in research on Mass Customization. As a consequence, we know a lot about the possible methods and organizational arrangements supporting Mass Customization, but we know very little as to how the human variable enters the puzzle. Given this fact, the present paper explores what roles are mostly affected by mass customization within the company, as well as what fundamental requirements Mass Customization poses to the manufacturing firm in terms of individual competences. We address these questions by means of a qualitative interview-based study involving 46 experts across 5 European countries. Our findings indicate that (1) R&D operative roles play a central role in the achievement of a Mass Customization capability and suffer from a serious gap or customization-related competencies; (2) individual attitudes, almost neglected in extant research on Mass Customization, are essential in determining the individual’s capability to perform customization-related tasks and finally (3) that methods knowledge is perceived by respondents as not so critical as individual attitudes and context knowledge.

Keywords: Mass Customization; Competences; Human Resources; Knowledge; Training (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isochp:978-0-387-32224-7_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9780387322247

DOI: 10.1007/0-387-32224-8_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Series in Operations Research & Management Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().