ABSTRACT
In most organizations, formal responses to AIDS are devised by functional specialists such as personnel or occupational health managers, usually in response to the prompting of government agencies, professional bodies, media attention and, perhaps, direct experience. Such responses generally reflect the particular concerns identified by these managers as relevant to the organization and are then amended, either by addition or deletion, through a process of scrutiny by senior management or a management dominated committee system. While this may subject the issue of AIDS to considerable discussion and the expression of divergent interests, it remains a process in which most of the participants are, usually by the very fact of their involvement and consequent access to relevant information, relatively well informed. In addition, they also bring to the discussion certain formal role expectations, that is, as managers charged with ensuring organizational efficiency, or as representatives of a given constituency such as a department or trade union.
