Labour Market Signalling through Survey Analysis - An Alternative to Manpower Planning?

The manpower planning school stresses, as seen in Chapter 1, labour market research and labour market signalling as ‘the’ alternative to manpower forecasting. There is no objection to the need for alternative techniques but, as also argued, there is a need to perform, and perfect, forecasting to provide a future vision to assist in the assessment of training and educational needs. Consequently, to supplement the forecasting technique already seen, research is presented in this chapter that applies some of the techniques recommended by the ‘LMS’ school described in Chapter 1. It would, of course, have been useful to apply the labour market signalling methodology in Sri Lanka and then to compare and discuss these results with the results obtained from the modelling exercise in Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, or fortunately, pragmatism took over and the author had research funds to carry out a labour market signalling exercise, not in Sri Lanka, but in Vietnam. The work described in this chapter gives an idea of the sort of alternative methodology that can be used instead of a modelling approach. The research was based upon three surveys (key informants, enterprise and tracer surveys) carried out during May and June 1999 in Vietnam. A simple forecasting model was also developed in Vietnam to supplement the survey results but is not discussed here.