Citation: L. Betiang. 2014. Legal Issues in Administering Personnel in Arts Organisation, in Babson Ajibade and E. Omini (eds), Creative & Media Arts: A Practical Source Book. Calabar: Spindrel, pg 239-255. Legal Issues in Administering Personnel in Arts Organisation Liwhu Betiang Personnel is the human factor in any organisation, and a great deal of what applies to a set of workers in one establishment equally applies in other establishments since the human being is basically the same even though circumstances may differ. The word ‘legal’ refers to common law as distinguished from equity. 1 In other words, a legal issue is a lawful issue and lawful does not mean in accordance with the laws of the country, but something done in accordance with the meaning of a particular act or law. So, legal issues that relate to the administration of personnel would refer to those issues that are contractually and statutorily covered by the laws of the country; and can be actionable in courts of law by personnel. Arthur C. Croft considers personnel administration as that function of management that deals with employment, training, employee health, wage and salary administration, personnel research, record keeping, government and employee relations. 2 Marshall believes that functions of personnel administration vary from company to company and even within the organisation they are varied according to the organisational needs. He enumerates the following functions in personnel administration: manpower planning; equal opportunity in employment; recruitment, selection and placement; performance appraisal; training, management and organisation development. Others include labour relations; employee benefit; plan administration; compensation; communications, safety and health; personnel policy development, personnel records and control; international personnel administration and personnel research. 3 These functions are carried out to maximise human resources to meet set objectives, providing personal satisfaction to employees. From these, one can deduce that personnel administration is a two-way activity, which concerns the worker and the organisation, the employee and the employer. Their common meeting-point is the work that produces the satisfaction of both organisational and personnel goals. The laws that regulate the relationship between employer and employee are derived from common law as well as statute. These laws developed from the relationship that existed between master and servant which now have become employer and employee with the development in economic systems and production. Statutes came into being to supplement the inadequacy of common law and to regulate this relationship more closely and in greater detail. Hence, the modern law guiding personnel administration is a combination of terms, principles, concepts and rules of common law and statute. These laws range from employment contracts, through statutory control of personnel administration, compensation for injury at work, and trade unionism, etc. Contract of Employment of Personnel A contract is "a binding agreement between two or more people to do or not to do some particular thing. It is enforceable in a law court". 4 Freedland (1963) defines it as that form of contract for personal service which the courts recognise as expressing the social relationship of employer and employee, as opposed to the other relationship of employer and independent contractor. 5 This contract also distinguishes between the contract of service and contract of services. A contract of employment may be formed by express or written