Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources

Recognizing that an important means of providing disabled people with the opportunity of achieving dignity, self respect and material and social well-being, the National Labour Consultative Council (NLCC) has published a booklet to promote equal employment opportunities for disabled job seekers. The aim of the booklet is to ensure that those who are of working age have the same opportunity as others in the community to engage in appropriate and personally satisfying employment. (The NLCC is a tripartite body embracing members of three major areas of industrial relations — employers, trade unions and government).

Increasingly, personnel specialists regard themselves as professionals working in organisations and expect to have their expertise recognised in much the same way as that of other professional workers. As Karen Legge¹ has pointed out, however, the personnel officer is not normally perceived in this way by line managers, who generally regard themselves as responsible for making the important personnel decisions. Such role ambiguity is likely to cause considerable difficulties for all those involved and needs to be resolved if the personnel function is to be performed effectively. It is hoped that this paper, which will review the contribution of the social sciences to personnel management, will be of some assistance in clarifying the role of the personnel specialist.

If one considers the past or present managign director of almost any prestigious, 'household' name company in Britain it is difficult, not to say almost impossible, to find a case of such a persan having a background in personnel management. This pasitian is unlikely to change in the future, but there is nevertheless evidence to indicate that the status of personnel management in the management decision-making hierarchy of many companies in Britain rose considerably throughout the 1970's.

On the 21st April 1982, two years after it was established, the Committee of Inquiry into Management Education chaired by Mr. J. T. Ralph, submitted its report to the Minister for Education.¹ Since that time the 'Ralph Report', as it has become known, has been commented on from various quarters and reviewed in a variety of forms, ranging from a seminar at the Australian Staff College at Mt. Eliza, various addresses by academics, through to discussion groups at Universities and by University Committees.

Organisational socialisation is a subject that is capturing the interest of both theorists and practitioners alike as organisations struggle to deal with the problems created by high turnover, lack of commitment and general dissatisfaction of employees.

While the influence of unions and work groups in socialisation is readily acknowledged, the role of the personnel practitioner in the process has been generally overlooked.

This paper attempts to explore this aspect by pointing out that the personnel professional is active in two major forms of socialisation. Moreover, by their very organisational position they are able to both initiate and monitor the process to ensure that as many employees as possible become one of us'.

In this paper, which is a sequel to that which appeared in the last issue of 'HRM', the authors present for critical comment, a theoretical model for Industrial Social Work practice, and a discussion of the salient issues related to the development of this field. An extensive literature search of both Australian and overseas publications has disclosed a dearth of information on this subject. The purpose of this paper is an attempt to redress this situation and to encourage the necessary industrial input required to develop such a model.