Macro Manpower Planning: Some International Comparisons

Throughout the world over the past forty years there has emerged an almost universal practice among natons to plan for the development and employment of their labour forces. For most, the practice is called manpower planning. Those troubled by the sexist connotations call the practice human resource planning. However, there is somewhat more, but not much more, to the differences between manpower and human resource planning. The human resources concept tends to encompass all productive uses of human energy, thought and talent in collective enterprise, including those for which the compensation is intrinsic. Manpower is ordinarily limited in meaning to externally motivated non‐voluntary activities, whether coerced by force or by monetary compensation.