Personnel management is the strategic approach to the human resourcing task which was thought to suit the mass producer best. Beginning as a support to the supervisory function, it developed in some countries (but not others) to the point where it made some claim to being influential over strategic thinking and decision making.

Personnel management has taken many diverse forms in different cultures. However, there are general tasks which all personnel managers must undertake, including the definition of work tasks, personnel selection, the definition, assessment and reward of performance, and the improvement of performance. The personnel function has contributed to increasing the validity and reliability of managerial judgements and has improved the ways in which organizations seek to control the behaviour of semi-skilled employees.

The underlying philosophy of the mass production organization is seen to be such as to encourage the personnel specialists to emphasize the value of, and to develop methods for, relying on a body of rules as a foundation for achieving stability in productive performance and relations. In some countries advocates of personnel management have become closely bound up with this strategy, possibly to the extent that they are seen to be incapable of switching to other strategies when the underlying market conditions change. However, personnel functionaries, however designated, are likely to continue to adapt their approaches to the strategies that emerge from current re-thinking of organizational objectives and strategies.

George F. Thomason