The role of the top human resources executive in major corporations has changed during the past decade into a directly involved business advisor, strategist, and implementer of business objectives. Intense competition has overridden previous human resources concerns and forced priorities toward internal, business-driven issues. Since cost-cutting and restructuring became the watchwords of the 1980s, personnel cutbacks and reorganization have occupied increasing proportions of the human resources executive's time. Nevertheless, all of the prior responsibilities, such as employee welfare, personnel administration, union relations, government regulation, and community concerns, are still human resources staff responsibilities. With the increasing dominance of business needs in the human resources function, there is some feeling that the top human resources position is becoming a general management job. In such a changing environment, training for the top human resources position becomes uncertain. A developing issue is whether there is a clear-cut human resources professional career and the specific content of such a career. (Author/KC)