ABSTRACT
Departments are distinguished by activity, purpose and centrality and sometimes by status differences and even socio-cultural considerations as well. Thus, although they are ‘all working for the same company’, it is not surprising that friction and rivalries develop. The American sociologist Melville Dalton made a study of the relationship between staff and line in three companies in the USA. The relationship was a fairly tense one, marked by unflattering stereotypes on both sides, the line viewing the staff as impractical idealists, and the staff seeing the line as obstructionist power mongers. The relationship between design and production is not usually as explicitly antipathetic as that between production and sales, yet there are similar contradictions of viewpoint and orientation. As with the sales-production relationships there are all sorts of differences of attitude and expectation, emphasis and priority, leading in different directions. The personnel function is interesting for the study of interdepartmental relations in a different way.
