ABSTRACT
One of the ultimate purposes of this study is to provide an analysis of the part that the personnel occupation plays in maintaining the ‘mode of integration’ of modern capitalist industrial society. Such a concern inevitably takes us into issues of power. But modern capitalist industrial society is very much organisational society, with bureaucratic organisations of all types playing a major part in the power structures of such a society. Personnel specialists, by the nature of their work, operate within such organisations and therefore, before we can talk about the contribution that the occupation makes at the societal level, we have to consider the extent to which the members of the occupation have or might potentially have power or influence in the ways that organisations are run. Katz has commented that ‘power is one of the most disagreed about topics’ and it is true that `few people, including scholars, are able to agree on the nature and substance of power’ (1968, p. 66). Rather than reviewing the extensive debates which have occurred within sociology over this issue, I shall simply put forward my own conception of power – this being something that is implicit in the general theoretical scheme which has been utilised throughout this study.
