Personalprinzip

Personalprinzip is an organizational principle in which authority and responsibility are allocated to individual persons rather than to functional units or objects. It is a basic form of Aufbauorganisation used in classical organizational theory, particularly in line organizations. In a pure form, a manager has direct supervisory authority over all tasks and employees within their unit, and the unit is tied to the person who leads it. The manager bears personal responsibility for performance, resources, and decisions within their scope. This arrangement creates clear accountability and direct communication, but it can limit specialization and may lead to bottlenecks if a person is overburdened.

In practice, the Personalprinzip is often used in combination with other organizational principles. For example, a line of command may follow the Personalprinzip while the day-to-day work is organized along functional or product lines inside the unit. It tends to be more common in small to medium-sized organizations or in administrative structures where rapid decision-making and clear personal responsibility are valued.

Advantages of the Personalprinzip include clear responsibility, faster decisions, and potentially higher motivation due to direct leadership. Disadvantages can include duplication of effort, less emphasis on functional expertise, and a higher risk of overloading individual leaders or creating conflicts with other parts of the organization when authority overlaps.

Historically, the term appears in German-language organizational theory as one of the classic principles of structure, often discussed alongside Funktionsprinzip and Objektprinzip. See also: Funktionsprinzip, Objektprinzip, Aufbauorganisation, Liniensystem.