A Knowledge Workers Acquisition Problem under Expanding and Volatile Demand: An Application of the Korean Information Security Service Industry

The aim of this paper is to consider the process of supplying trained workers with knowledge and skills for upcoming business opportunities and the process of training apprentices to be prepared to meet future demands in an IT service firm. As the demand for new workers fluctuates, a firm should employ a buffer workforce such as apprentices or interns. However, as a result of rapid business development, the capacity of the buffer may be exceeded, thus requiring the company to recruit skilled workers from outside the firm. Therefore, it is important for a firm to map out a strategy for manpower planning so as to fulfill the demands of new business and minimize the operation costs related to training apprentices and recruiting experienced workers. First, this paper analyzes the supply and demand of workers for the IT service in a knowledge-intensive field. It then presents optimal human resource planning strategies via the familiar method of stochastic process. Also, we illustrate that our model is applied to the human resource planning of an information security service firm in South Korea.