Personnel Management, Power and the Certification Process

This paper examines some approaches to the professionalisation process and relates these to considerations which seem to have led the Institute of Personnel Management, particularly in recent years, to be concerned to establish and develop the knowledge‐base of the occupation of personnel management, importantly through certification procedures. On the basis of a comparative national questionnaire survey of student attrition rates on IPM and Diploma in Management Studies courses over the years 1973–76, it is hypothesised that this emphasis has been a major contributory factor in the high attrition rates on IPM examination courses throughout the United Kingdom. The paper concludes with some observations on the new examination scheme (introduced in 1980) in the context of a discussion of personnel managers' (and their spokesmen's) search for more acceptance and power in organisations.