Do personal traits influence inventory management performance?—The case of intelligence, personality, interest and knowledge

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of four personal traits (intelligence, knowledge, personality and interests) on performance in a structurally simple, yet dynamically complex inventory management task. We base our model on PPIK theory from cognitive psychology and ground the experiment we conduct on the tradition of dynamic decision making research. Findings are that intelligence is the strongest predictor of inventory management performance, while the analysis shows weaker but significant relations between the other traits and performance. Regarding interests, we find that a strong interest for social issues leads to higher cost and, thus, worse performance. A similar detrimental impact on performance has a personality that is open for new experiences. Implications for research comprise investigating the relationship between the four traits and accounting for different task complexities. While obviously intelligence or personality of inventory managers cannot easily be changed, this research can help identifying favorable combinations of psychological traits that can be used in personnel selection. The value of this paper lies in contributing to behavioral theory building in operations management by describing and interpreting the psychological foundations for one of the most notorious tasks: controlling a stock of finished products and adapting its inflow to its outflow.