Abstract
Over the last decade, writings on the personnel profession have been pervaded by a sense of exclusion from the major management decisions. For example, Hunt and Lees report that human assets are rarely considered in decisions on company acquisition policy and that personnel managers are only involved in relatively peripheral aspects, such as the transfer of pension rights. Daniel found that personnel managers are normally excluded from decisions on re-organisation which follow the introduction of new technology, although they are sometimes involved in other forms of organisational change. In fact even this latter involvement may be of a fairly passive character in view of Evans and Cowling's finding that personnel managers do not usually take an executive role in company re-organisation.