It is important to take the organizational context of inventories into account when dealing with inventory control problems in this article。 This means that in addition  to  the  traditional  points  for  attention,  such  as  ordering  quantities     and

replenishment strategies,contextual aspects need attention as well。For example ,they are trying to afford the allocation of responsibilities and authorities regarding inventory management,the quality of inventory information and the relevant decision-making processes。 These contextual factors as well as the traditional factors can be integrated into an organizational perspective on inventory control。 The development and practical application of this organizational perspective are the main topics of this article。

The article is organized as follows。 First, the organizational perspective on inventory control is developed。 In the end, the organizational context of inventories is investigated to determine aspects that play a part in inventory control。 Second, a framework is presented to facilitate the application of the organizational perspective to practical inventory control problems。 The third section of this article describes the research methodology of a performed case study in which the organizational perspective has been applied。 The case study regards the spare parts inventory of a missionary aviation organization in Africa。 Fourth, the results following from the case study are presented。 It can be concluded that taking the organizational context of inventories into account leads to a better understanding of the problem and to a more appropriate redesign of the inventory situation。 The final section of this article summarizes the conclusions。

2。An organizational perspective on inventory control

Within the area of operations management and operations research  many contributions regarding inventory control can be found。 Traditionally they focus on three topics that are widely recognized to play an important part in inventory control: order quantities, order intervals and inventory control systems。 See, for example, Plossl (1985) and Silveretal。 (1998)。 The first topic regards order quantities and how much to be order。 In order to determine economic order quantities, several costs associated with inventories play a part, such as ordering costs and inventory carrying costs。 The second topic regards the order interval or when to order。 In this respect demand    and lead-time processes are important。 Finally, the third topic regards the

inventory control system。 Common subjects concerning systems for controlling inventories are ABC classifications and information systems。 These three aspects represent the traditional characteristics of an inventory situation。 In addition, they are considered to be starting points for improving inventory control。 Over the past two decades, as the field of operations management has developed and matured, several new concepts have been added to the list of relevant inventory control topics。 These more management-oriented topics include MRP, just-in-time (JIT) and ERP (Hayes,1998; Leschke, 1998)。 Although these recent contributions have a more qualitative nature, they show the same one-sided scope on inventory control as the previous contributions。 In fact,most contributions pay little or no attention to the fact that the majority of inventories are situated in an organizational context。

From a practical point of view it seems that the organizational setting of inventories should not be disregarded。 Being situated within an organizational context several other factors play a part in inventory control。 In general these factors lie outside the field of operations management and operations research but should nevertheless be taken into consideration。 Most factors regard the organizational incorporation of inventories and the associated information flows。 A significant example concerning inventory management is the allocation of responsibilities and authorities。 Inventory control problems can easily arise when for instance nobody in the organization is responsible for the inventory or the responsible person has insufficient authorities to carry out the task。Likewise, high inventory values indicating a lack of control may just be the result of inaccurate inventory records or of a reporting system that does not function well。 Thus, the organizational context of inventories also contains several aspects that can affect inventory control。