ABSTRACT
First, the personnel policies and practices of organizations were strictly under the control of the state through regional/local labor departments. Centralization, formalization and standardization of the personnel policies and practices were the primary tasks of the Ministry of Labor (for blue-collar workers) and the Ministry of Personnel (for white-collar and managerial staff). The state not only determined the number of people to be employed and sources of recruitment, but also unilaterally set the pay scales for different categories of workers. State intervention also extended to the structure and obligations of the personnel functions at organizational level and managers of all levels were only involved in the administrative function and policy implementation under rigid policy guidelines (Child, 1994; Cooke, 2003a).
