The Minnesota Manpower Management Simulation Game

Abstract

Managers universally attest to the important influence sound manpower decisions have on organizational effectiveness. However, these managers have typically been trained to view personnel management in terms of discrete decisions such as recruiting, employment, compensation, labor-relations, and training. College programs and personnel management handbooks are similarly organized into discrete functional areas. Subsequently most managers tend to develop personnel policies and make personnel decisions related to discrete functional areas, thus overlooking the essential interrelatedness of these personnel decisions to the firm’s profits and other goals. Perhaps the problem can be stated by saying that many managers have been trained to view manpower management decisions in discrete, neat categories and have not been trained to develop a more integrated approach to analyzing and planning manpower resource utilization. Similarly, researchers have approached manpower issues in a piecemeal manner. Researchers typically have studied motivation, training, and development, selection collective bargaining or some other selected aspect of manpower management. Few have tried to study and understand either the interrelatedness and interaction of personnel decisions or the implications for cost and efficiency goals.