In 1961, i.e. 50 years ago, the first chair in personnel management was established at university level in Germany. This marks a good occasion to ask for the results of scientific research in the German speaking countries on the topic of personnel management. Can we observe significant advances in knowledge since then? What are the contents, the methods and the styles of the theoretical analyses and the empirical investigations on this highly contested terrain of economic reality? These questions were the main themes in the 8th annual conference of the “AKempor: Arbeitskreis für empirische Personal- und Organisationsforschung” (Working Group on Empirical Personnel and Organizational Studies). In this special issue we present five contributions of this conference which consider the main problems with a science of personnel management, namely the explanation of the employee’s behavior on the one side and the explanation of the employer’s behavior at the other side. The issue considers the theoretical base of personnel management and the ideological functions that the contributions of personnel management scientists may have.