Organizational Capabilities Building through Cmmi: the Case of Taiwan Software Industry

This paper studies the change for capabilities/competencies of Taiwan software firms through physical systems, knowledge and skills, managerial system, and value and norm aspects before and after they introduce CMMI. By conducting qualitative-based multiple case-study approach and using semi-structural questionnaire as the tool, we identified CMMI related organization routines. Grounding on these routines, we integrate capabilities/competencies related literatures and value co-production studies to propose a co-evolution model, which suggest that capabilities/competencies of software companies come from the co-evolution between organizational standard operation procedures (SOPs) and customer projects. The co-evolution model would be useful to supplement the dynamic capabilities theory of firm from the value co-production viewpoint. Further, it is analyzed whether these capabilities can become the strategic assets of the software firms. Finally, we recommend that the introduction of CMMI is not only the behavior for Taiwan software firms to build their competitive advantage without differences, but also to build a high performance mechanism for co-producing value with their customers.