The relationship between accounting and personnel management — past conflicts and future potential

Abstract

There is no doubt that personnel management and accounting have traditionally been viewed as separate functional areas of management with only slender and rather tenuous connections. The concerns of the personnel manager have been seen as related to crucial, but limited, aspects of the behaviour and management of people at work, whilst the accountant's role in the provision of financial information has been seen as an impersonal concern, abstracting from rather than enriching the human environment of an enterprise. Moreover, even where the two functions are clearly interrelated, the relationship has all too often been seen in terms of differing orientations and conflicts, rather than a co‐operative concern with the interests of the enterprise as a whole, as is often and so clearly demonstrated by their joint involvement in the setting of performance standards and the subsequent reaction to the reporting of actual results.

Citation

Hopwood, A.G. (1972), "The relationship between accounting and personnel management — past conflicts and future potential", Personnel Review, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 40-47. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055199