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In an earlier issue of this journal we compared international experiences in manpower planning at the national level. We offered a matrix of planning approaches (Figure 1), a typology of the politico‐economic systems in which such planning has occurred (not repeated here) and a conceptual framework classifying the objectives and approaches of various countries by stage of economic development (Figure 2). We promised a subsequent article drawing lessons from planning experience which might contribute to improving the international manpower planning process. This, belatedly, is that follow‐up article. In it we review the status of manpower planning in developed, newly industrialising and labour‐short, less developed countries (LDCs). Then we report criticisms which have been levelled at national manpower planning in labour‐surplus LDCs, explain what we see to be the reasons for what has been criticised, identify lessons and make recommendations which we believe will skirt many of the problems identified.

It is well recognised that job security has risen relative to pay in the hierarchy of employee concerns. Job security provisions won by or awarded to employees comprise high fixed costs from the employer's viewpoint. The firm's flexibility and adaptability to fluctuations in product demand are reduced thereby. For these reasons American employers have long resisted any form of job guarantee. The few who have made a fetish of such guarantees have been companies experiencing either long‐term growth or stable demand and have insured themselves against unsupportable fixed costs by strictly limiting the number to whom guarantees are made. Such practices add to the insecurities of those outside the guarantees. More employers are now succumbing to the pressures from employees, unorganised as well as organised, for job guarantees, but they too have protected themselves by use of temporary work devices as buffers against over‐commitment to permanent employees. The next employment policy issue after displaced workers may be some protection for the temporary workers who increasingly bear the brunt of fluctuations in labour demand.

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.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Introduction Recent declines in the rate of productivity growth in America have drawn attention to the links among productivity, unit labour costs, inflation, and living standards. Economists have focused on the causes of declining productivity growth and have identified such factors as slowdowns in capital formation, decreased spending on research and development, increased government regulation, and changes in the economy's output mix and labour force composition. McConnell has suggested alternative sources of the “productivity problem”: blem”: