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Mass customization presents a paradox to traditional manufacturing practices. Historically, companies chose to produce either customized, crafted products or mass‐produced, standardized products. Thus, mass customization presents a paradox by combining customization and mass production, offering unique products in a mass‐produced, low cost, high volume production environment. If mass customization is truly a combination of mass production and craft manufacturer, how does a manufacturer become a mass customizer? Are the key principles of mass customization rooted in customized product knowledge or mass production techniques? Does the path to mass customization impact financial performances? This paper begins to answer these questions by exploring the total product mix of mass customizing plants using data gathered from 126 mass customizers. This study shows plants that choose mass customization approaches that match the non‐mass customized product line characteristics have higher financial performance than those firms without a matched product line.

This paper provides substantive understanding of how routine emergency service performance is affected by diversion of resources to a disaster occurring concurrently in a surrounding area. Based on operations strategy models, this study identifies crucial infrastructural and integration components necessary to develop dynamic capabilities for the primary responsibility of responding effectively to routine emergencies during a disaster. A database from a local fire district is used to explore the impact of a wildfire disaster on the operational performance measures of response time and total time. The results of multivariate multiple regression show the impact of the disaster occurrence on these performance measures for a range of incident types in the time periods before, during, and after the wildfire. Findings suggest key drivers of dynamic resource capabilities necessary for improving routine incident operational performance. Implications for emergency services managers include the need to develop and implement data‐driven investigation and review, focused responder training, resident and business engagement, and a tiered mutual aid system. Contributions include development of a framework explaining the impact of disaster occurrences and identification of important dynamic resource capabilities. This paper goes beyond prior research by exploring the impact of disasters on routine emergency performance measures and identifying resource capabilities necessary to alleviate the impact on performance.

This research examines computer-supported collaborative learning. Master's of business administration (MBA) students in an online program were surveyed to examine the extent to which an orientation toward teamwork and the development of group cohesiveness affect overall student learning and the learning that results specifically from team interactions (team-source learning). The results indicate that both teamwork orientation and group cohesiveness predict student learning, with group cohesiveness mediating the relationship between teamwork orientation and student learning. Teamwork orientation and group cohesiveness appear to be equally important predictors of team-source learning. The implications of this research for the use of teams in online distance education are discussed.