The personnel function in industrial society has been marked by crisis, reappraisals, struggles for power, and guilty conscience. The profession is again under pressure; company management often questions its contribution to the solution of strategic personnel matters, while employees and their unions question its values, and wish to place its actions under the control of the employees. The description of the present situation must be based on tendencies toward change which have already had effect. Some of the tendencies which we may observe in action at present and which will influence personnel work in the future include: (1) movement toward a postindustrial society, with industry's principal branch being services and the basic conflict between the capital owner and the worker giving way to conflict between the professional and the layman; (2) movement toward a realignment of power, between the company and society and within companies, prompting considerable personal development on the part of employees and necessitating new company organization; (3) movement toward a more humane technology; and (4) movement toward a more open and more flexible company organization. Personnel officers must become realistic specialists in people, able to analyze values and processes of change in different situations. (Author/AJ)