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Corporate manpower planning: A personnel review monograph
193
Book Reviews A.R. SMITH (Ed.)
Corporate Manpower Planning: A Personnel Review Monograph Gower, Westmead, 1980, xii + 187 pages, £9.50 The book consists of a set of papers published before in "Personnel Review" between 1971 and 1977. Most papers are concentrated on quantitative aspects and models of manpower planning. Some are case oriented. A proportion of the book is based on work done for the Civil Service Department. The material presented is well known, of course, to people working in this field. But the book may be useful for people who like to know something about quantitative models of manpower planning. Especially the papers by J.R. Lawrence (Manpower and Personnel Models in Britain), A.F. Forbes et al. (Manpower Planning in Use in the CSD) and D.J. Bartholomew et al., (Manpower Planning in the Face of Uncertainty) give elementary and basic material. The introduction and intermediate comments of the editor give a well-balanced view on the use of the various techniques and models.
J. WIJNGAARD University of Technology Eindhoven, Netherlands
C.J. VERHOEVEN
Techniques in Corporate Manpower Planning: Methods and Applications Kluwer & Nijhoff, Boston, 1982, xii + 186 pages This is a useful addition to the growing literature on manpower planning at the level of the firm Operational researchers wishing to review books, and publishers wishing to have new books reviewed, please contact C.B. Tilanus, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 bib Eindhoven, Netherlands, Tel. 31.40.473601. North-Holland Publishing Company European Journal of Operational Research I I (1982) 193-197
or institution - here called corporate manpower planning. It is based at the author's experience as a member of a group based at the Eindhoven University of Technology and the Graduate School of Management in Delft. An introductory chapter on the nature of manpower planning is followed by two chapters on the basic methodology of the subject. The first on requirement (or, demand) forecasting gives a rather fuller treatment than is usually found, while the second on availability (or supply) forecasting is rather brief. Both are a prelude to the core of the book which is an account of the author's interactive manpower planning system known as FORMASY. This embodies a Markov model and it appears to be a flexible and versatile system. A case study on manpower planning within the Royal Netherlands Air Force concludes the main part of the book. An appendix contains a specimen computer run with input and output. It is not clear for whom the book is intended. There is too little on the methodology for it to stand alone as a text for a course but it would be a valuable adjunct to one of the established texts to which it is heavily indebted (Vajda, Mathematics of Manpower Planning (1978), Grinold and Marshall, Manpower Planning Models (1977), Bartholomew and Forbes, Statistical Techniques for Manpower Planning (1979)). The sound practical sense and the detailed case study based on real data will be invaluable to the teacher. The book does on a smaller scale what A.R. Smith's Manpower Planning in the Civil Service (HMSO, 1976) did a few years ago. That is, it complements the more theoretical treatments by providing an exposition of basic methodology from a distinctivc!y applied standpoint. There is little doubt that the Markov model provides the most versatile foundation on which to construct a planning system, though the author's arguments for doing so are not entirely convincing. There are circumstances in which a renewal model is more realistic and there is no difficulty in incorporating this into a general programme. Indeed it is useful to be able to look at a planning problem from the point of view of both models. A special and useful feature of FORMASY is that it
0377-2217/82/0000-0000/$02.75 © 1982 North-Holland
Book Reviews A.R. SMITH (Ed.)
Corporate Manpower Planning: A Personnel Review Monograph Gower, Westmead, 1980, xii + 187 pages, £9.50 The book consists of a set of papers published before in "Personnel Review" between 1971 and 1977. Most papers are concentrated on quantitative aspects and models of manpower planning. Some are case oriented. A proportion of the book is based on work done for the Civil Service Department. The material presented is well known, of course, to people working in this field. But the book may be useful for people who like to know something about quantitative models of manpower planning. Especially the papers by J.R. Lawrence (Manpower and Personnel Models in Britain), A.F. Forbes et al. (Manpower Planning in Use in the CSD) and D.J. Bartholomew et al., (Manpower Planning in the Face of Uncertainty) give elementary and basic material. The introduction and intermediate comments of the editor give a well-balanced view on the use of the various techniques and models.
J. WIJNGAARD University of Technology Eindhoven, Netherlands
C.J. VERHOEVEN
Techniques in Corporate Manpower Planning: Methods and Applications Kluwer & Nijhoff, Boston, 1982, xii + 186 pages This is a useful addition to the growing literature on manpower planning at the level of the firm Operational researchers wishing to review books, and publishers wishing to have new books reviewed, please contact C.B. Tilanus, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 bib Eindhoven, Netherlands, Tel. 31.40.473601. North-Holland Publishing Company European Journal of Operational Research I I (1982) 193-197
or institution - here called corporate manpower planning. It is based at the author's experience as a member of a group based at the Eindhoven University of Technology and the Graduate School of Management in Delft. An introductory chapter on the nature of manpower planning is followed by two chapters on the basic methodology of the subject. The first on requirement (or, demand) forecasting gives a rather fuller treatment than is usually found, while the second on availability (or supply) forecasting is rather brief. Both are a prelude to the core of the book which is an account of the author's interactive manpower planning system known as FORMASY. This embodies a Markov model and it appears to be a flexible and versatile system. A case study on manpower planning within the Royal Netherlands Air Force concludes the main part of the book. An appendix contains a specimen computer run with input and output. It is not clear for whom the book is intended. There is too little on the methodology for it to stand alone as a text for a course but it would be a valuable adjunct to one of the established texts to which it is heavily indebted (Vajda, Mathematics of Manpower Planning (1978), Grinold and Marshall, Manpower Planning Models (1977), Bartholomew and Forbes, Statistical Techniques for Manpower Planning (1979)). The sound practical sense and the detailed case study based on real data will be invaluable to the teacher. The book does on a smaller scale what A.R. Smith's Manpower Planning in the Civil Service (HMSO, 1976) did a few years ago. That is, it complements the more theoretical treatments by providing an exposition of basic methodology from a distinctivc!y applied standpoint. There is little doubt that the Markov model provides the most versatile foundation on which to construct a planning system, though the author's arguments for doing so are not entirely convincing. There are circumstances in which a renewal model is more realistic and there is no difficulty in incorporating this into a general programme. Indeed it is useful to be able to look at a planning problem from the point of view of both models. A special and useful feature of FORMASY is that it
0377-2217/82/0000-0000/$02.75 © 1982 North-Holland