ABSTRACT
The clients of the personnel department: the chief executive, the management, the employees, the shareholders and the public at large will all have different ideas of what is meant by excellence in personnel management. Personnel management, by being successful in the 1980s, has created a climate which is totally inappropriate for the demography of the 1990s. Laws that reduced the incidence of crisis by changing power relationships in favour of employers also weakened the impact of personnel directors on organizations; this has been the story of some companies in the 1980s. In the 1950s and 1960s many personnel managers argued that all would be well if only personnel management had its place on the board. To make sense of the complexities of personnel management, one needs to communicate to the workforce on a regular basis what is happening and why it is happening, explaining and reconciling inconsistencies with previous statements.
