Questions of personnel administration, personal management, have long been overshadowed by the other forms of decision-making premises. The organization was identified by its goals (and thus largely through purpose programs), and rationalization considerations were therefore directed primarily at the hierarchical organizational structure, i.e., competencies and communication channels. It was a question of centralization or decentralization, steep or flat hierarchies, the relationship between staff and line organization, the incorporation of the group principle into the overly individualistic job descriptions (criticism of "Taylorism") and similar efforts. The selection of personnel had to presuppose the corresponding decisions about the other components of the job. It had to conform, more badly than good, to the principles of rational decision-making. Personnel management was considered a special competence – both in the description of its task and in the organizational endowment with decision-making powers. Its guiding principle was: "The right man in the right place.
The principle of their rationality was thus the correlation between two unknown variables, the principle of their practice consequently the oscillation between determinations on the one hand and on the other, between personnel evaluations and job descriptions; and their practice, because persons are difficult to move and hardly to change, could never be fast enough to be able to redeem the hopes for rationality under constantly changing conditions.
Moreover, this maxim would not take into account the factual expectations of individuals. These expectations follow their own judgment about the possibilities and obstacles of a career. However, superiors had to reckon with these expectations, they could play with them. For as soon as opportunities for advancement play a role, the corresponding decision-making powers are difficult to separate from the general powers of superiors. "Personnel sovereignty" is (and of course remains) an important instrument of domination, especially if subordinates can be kept in the dark about how it will be handled. The group participation in personnel selection demanded by the human relations movement has always remained controversial.
This secondary importance of personnel issues has led to illusions about the changeability of organizations. After all, organizational plans and task descriptions can be changed easily, practically with the stroke of a pen. In contrast, the agglomerate of individual self-expectations and external expectations identified as a "person" is difficult, if not impossible, to change. This is due not least to the circular interplay of self- and other-expectations. Even if individuals were willing to change, they find themselves fixed by the social expectations they face on a daily basis; and similarly, changing demands still impinge on the same person, who must maintain his or her identity for many social contacts. Personal and social memory become so intertwined that a planned change can hardly find out that asymmetry which it would need in order to apply its lever. So it was understandably obvious to start attempts at change not here but with the organizational plans and task descriptions and to assume that the persons as individuals would somehow follow the changed realities. Accordingly, the problem of personal decision-making premises was then also underestimated.