ZERO INVENTORY AND FIRM PERFORMANCE: A MANAGEMENT PARADIGM REVISITED

Robert Obermaier (1) , Andreas Donhauser

1 Chair for Accounting and Control

The "zero inventory" paradigm says that inventory reflects waste and should be eliminated causing performance to rise. In this study we investigate the effect of inventory holding on firm performance analyzing 3057 firm years of data. Interpreting performance as function of inventory, results show that firms with the lowest inventory have the worst performance (et vice versa). Understanding inventory as function of performance results indicate that low performing firms are carrying least inventory, whereas high performing firms have the highest stocks. Besides questions of causality, our results cannot support a paradigm which suggests firms to move toward "zero inventory".

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Robert Obermaier, Andreas Donhauser. ZERO INVENTORY AND FIRM PERFORMANCE: A MANAGEMENT PARADIGM REVISITED. International Journal of Production Research, 2012, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/00207543.2011.613869⟩. ⟨hal-00770419⟩