THE THEORY, PRACTICE AND POLITICS OF MANPOWER PLANNING: AN ANALYTICAL CRITIQUE WITH EMPIRICAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE N.H.S.

Since individual and/or sectional interests are embedded in organisational relations, the meaning and significance of manpower plans will depend very much on the political and career systems of which they are both a condition and a consequence. Manpower planning can never be seen simply as a technical solution to practical problems for insofar as it reflects and reinforces power‐knowledge practices within organisations, it is as much part of the problem as of the solution. The post‐Griffith climate of industrial management in the NHS is leading to the imposition of an artificial consensus through bureaucratic and technicist means, rather than identifying and developing new ways to mobilise the creative collective power of the majority, who at present remain peripheral to, and disinterested in, their organisation.