Operations manager turnover and inventory fluctuations

We argue that a recently appointed operations manager deploys a higher variability inventory policy than a high-tenure operations manager does. This contention is supported by the idea that the former manager determines the production schedule by focusing on the current-period demand for information, while the latter also incorporates her expectations over future demand shocks. A second theoretical outcome of this study is that the variability of inventory and of the number of firm's employees are positively correlated, especially in firms with a recently appointed operational manager. Such managers use cojointly inventory and temporary workers to buffer demand shocks more often than high-tenure managers. Empirical support for these propositions was gathered from two databases of Spanish manufacturing firms.