In the maturity stage not

In the maturity stage, not only organizations’ growth continues increasing but at a decreasing rate relative to its rate in the rapid growth stage, but also demand and return rate become more stable (Jawahar & McLaughlin, 2001; Laan & Salomon, 1997; Rink & Fox, 1999). Although growth rate has slowed, organizations at this stage have more market power as well as market share (Pashley & Philippatos, 1990), which encourages them to adopt a risk-averse strategy and focus more on profitability (Elsayed & Paton, 2005; Jawahar & McLaughlin, 2001). Thus, the ability to reduce inventory levels, and hence translating any inventory apexbio calculator into improved financial performance, will be grater in the maturity stage. This is because, first, as organizations move from the rapid growth to the maturity stage, they put more emphasis on cost control (Miller & Friesen, 1984; Quinn & Cameron, 1983) to improve efficiency and reduce overall cost (Anderson & Zeithaml, 1984). One possible way to improve efficiency, in this stage, is by balancing customer service levels and inventory costs (Kaminski & Rink, 1984). Second, “firms decrease their inventory holdings with an increase in their market power. An interpretation is that a less competitive product market reduces the adverse consequences of stock outs and firm respond by reducing inventories” (Blazenko & Vandezande, 2003, p. 362). Third, organizations with slow sales growth find it harder to manage inventory than those firms that experience high sales growth because the former have to find ways to dispose off excess inventory (Gaur & Kesavan, 2009). Finally, since increasing profitability, and rather increasing the market share, is the key objective in the maturity stage (Elsayed & Paton, 2005), inventory levels would be reduced to attain a high rate of return (Anderson & Zeithaml, 1984). Thus, the preceding discussion suggests that it is most appropriate and beneficial for mature organizations to reduce inventory. Put in another way, increasing inventory in mature organizations is expected to drain their financial performance. Thus, the above presented argument will be tested empirically through the following hypothesis: As organizations move from the maturity stage to the revival stage, Solution hybridization need to make a significant shift in their product–market strategies and undergoing dramatic diversification in their products and markets (Miller & Friesen, 1984). Although all organizations do not enter the revival stage at the same point, revival organizations seek to developing new product to stimulate growth (Kazanjian, 1988), and rebuilding their market share (Jawahar & McLaughlin, 2001). As with rapid growth stage, since organizations in the revival stage are aiming to expand the market share, and rather profitability (Elsayed & Paton, 2009), they need to increase inventory to boost sales growth by increasing service levels. This implies that inventory and organization performance are expected to be positively correlated in this stage. However, this relationship is likely to be somewhat weaker than that in the repaid growth stage. This is because organizations in the revival stage, as compared with organizations in the growth stage, put significantly more emphasis on formal cost controls and performance (Silvola, 2008), to secure financial resources that are needed to invest in a more general program of product (re-)development (Elsayed & Paton, 2009; Jawahar & McLaughlin, 2001). Thus, the preceding argument will be tested empirically through the following hypothesis:
Sample and data The sample of this study was drawn from the lists of the most trading on the Stock Exchange published by the Egyptian stock market authority. These lists include firms that constitute around 45 percent of the total market capitalization (Abdel Shahid, 2003; Elsayed & Wahba, 2013). Published lists from 2005 to 2010 were examined and firms from financial industries were ruled out as their operations and regulations are fairly different. The study did not consider data after 2010 to avoid the expected effect of the Egyptian revolution that was started in January 2011. The required data were existed for 84 firms covering eighteen industrial sectors with total number of observations of 504.