Within the framework of an empirical investigation in the civil service of the Federal Republic of Germany, interviews were conducted with civil servants with a view to determining (with the aid of an abbreviated measurement scale) whether they were generally more inclined to attribute events to an internal or to an external locus of control; in addition, the interviewees were asked specifically in which of these directions they were wont to locate the causes of their own promotions and those of their colleagues. - In its approach, the investigation was based on the attribution model developed by HEIDER, JONES, HECKHAUSEN, and others. The present paper reports on the study’s findings, and relates them to general problems of rational allocation of personnel in large-scale organizational systems.