This qualitative study aimed to explore strategies for manpower management of director of hospital (DH) and director of nursing (DON) in 10 general hospitals, southern Thailand. Data were collected by in-depth individual interviews of individually 9 DH and 10 DON. The result showed that the DH used many strategies such as analyzing the need for manpower by considering related factors, focusing on nurses’ happiness in their work, and negotiating the numbers of allocated staff with public health physician director, providing funds for the young generation to achieve sufficient numbers of nurses, promoting teamwork, promoting motivation and orientation of new staff regarding the organization culture. The DON used many strategies such as analyzing the need of manpower considering related and influencing factors. Furthermore, the DON also used nursing productivity, sick leave, turnover rate, retirement rate, transfer to other working place rate, preparation of comprehensive data and necessary information for the allocation manpower, set-up of the APN role, and encouraging head nurses’ awareness to provide support for staff in the unit and perform evaluation fairly. In conclusion, both the DH and DON used many strategies for achieving sufficient man power. Some methods were congruently, but some were different.

Key words: management strategy, manpower analysis, manpower recruitment, manpower utilization