Recent empirical studies have refined our understanding of engineer-to-order (ETO) situations, supporting the existence of different order-fulfilment strategies based on the degree of customer involvement in the engineering and production activities, which differs depending on the strategic fit with the environment in which the company operates. Despite the importance of this finding, limited attempts have been made to comprehensively understand the determinants for this strategic choice in ETO companies. To overcome this gap, this study aimed to investigate the sources of differentiation between the environments that ETO companies can face and the ways of reacting to strategically fit the order-fulfilment strategy. Therefore, this research analysed the existing literature through a contingency theory lens and performed a multiple case-study research in a specific ETO sector, i.e. the machinery industry. The study identified five different order-fulfilment strategies implemented in the machinery industry to provide different product families to the market. For each strategy, the different environment characteristics were defined, and the performance outcome was measured, explaining the rationale for the positioning of the product families in different strategies. The findings of this study have two main contributions. First, the study contributes to theory by deepening and refining the analysis of contingencies for choosing different order-fulfilment strategies in the ETO context. Second, the study provides practical guidelines to ETO companies that want to adapt their order-fulfilment strategies to the unexpected or planned changes in their environment.

中文翻译：

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按订单设计的公司订单履行策略的决定因素：来自机械行业的见解

最近的实证研究完善了我们对按订单设计 (ETO) 情况的理解，支持基于客户参与工程和生产活动的程度存在不同的订单履行策略，这取决于与客户的战略匹配度。公司经营所处的环境。尽管这一发现很重要，但对全面了解 ETO 公司这一战略选择的决定因素的尝试有限。为了克服这一差距，本研究旨在调查 ETO 公司可能面临的环境之间的差异来源，以及战略性地适应订单履行战略的反应方式。所以，本研究通过权变理论的视角分析了现有文献，并在特定的 ETO 部门（即机械行业）进行了多项案例研究。该研究确定了机械行业实施的五种不同的订单履行策略，以向市场提供不同的产品系列。对于每个策略，定义了不同的环境特征，并测量了性能结果，解释了产品系列在不同策略中定位的基本原理。这项研究的结果有两个主要贡献。首先，该研究通过深化和完善对在 ETO 背景下选择不同订单履行策略的意外事件的分析，为理论做出贡献。第二，