Recently I was importing Positions using the Data Import/Export Framework (staging to target process). I got the mentioned error.
After doing some debugging I found there was a table “PayrollPositionDetails” that was in one of the DMF tables “DMFTargetEntityHierarchy”. But the Payroll configuration key was turned off.
I ended up deleting the record from the DMFTargetEntityHierarchy table. (Alt+F9 to delete from table browser).
Reran the processing group and all worked.