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This article reviews a set of studies depicting how public officials (agents) in French public utilities have reacted, in practical terms, to customer‐focused reforms.

The article is based on data drawn from labour studies commissioned by French public utilities to evaluate the effects of reforms. Qualitative research using direct observation or semi‐structured interviews testing the assumption that the real locus of change in behaviour, values and identity stem from changes in work practices not principles.

There is evidence of a progressive diffusion of new public management values but this varies between different groups and their changes in behaviour are triggered more by the adjustment of workers' practices to new management rules and technical innovations than the imposition of new principles or cultural values. The responses of agents are also often inconsistent. This suggests that the generalised findings of research based on surveys and questionnaires may not capture the reality of change, which is more complex, varied, inconsistent and contingent.

It offers a challenging critique of the use of surveys and top down approaches in the study of the impact of new public management on public officials and suggests a bottom up approach throws more light on how and why changes in behaviour, values and identity occur.

Reform of the French civil service, embarked on in 1989, was designed to involve state employees and officials in the process by appealing to their sense of duty and commitment, rather than adopting a top‐down approach and imposing control over them. “Service projects” provided for active participation of state officials in the definition of aims and objectives and organisation of their services. Several thousand individual services were involved. The evidence suggests that, in practice, participation concerned mainly the conditions of work organisation and often failed to involve all levels of the hierarchy. The reforms did not involve the trade unions, although they were consulted. As in the case of quality circles, which the reforms resembled, participation by all agents was not maintained after the first project. The use of “strategic projects” are still under way but the dimension of staff participation has progressively disappeared. The conclusion is that “service projects” are a failed experiment in staff participation and involvement.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the dissemination of public management practices in French State administrations and to interpret results in the light of successive reform trends, in order to give an objective evaluation of French public management reform.

The paper is based on a survey on use of management instruments, targeting Heads of Ministry departments (n=298, response rate=80 per cent, use of rigorous sampling techniques). The survey measures actual practices rather than opinions through lists of use of “management instruments”. The method is adapted to evaluate a reform which has mainly been defined in a process of “modernization”.

The findings demonstrate the high level of dissemination of process innovations, even if as observed in many countries, human resource transformation is more challenging than change in quality methods or user's orientation implementation. The survey also points out major disparities between different Ministries and implies that two different models of reform have been progressively implemented during successive periods.

The survey was conducted in 2007.

The survey is the first attempt to measure public management practices in French State administration conducted by the French National Institute for Statistics (INSEE). The present article is one of the few quantitative appraisals of public management produced in Europe.

The purpose of this study is to examine mobile technology as being a key apparatus and interface for collaborative innovation, which allows organisations to develop their information ecology.

The qualitative research was performed by in-depth interviews, observations and field notes. The eight main interviews are supported by an interdisciplinary narrative literature review of knowledge management and associated fields.

This study validates the following propositions: mobile technology can offer users timely information, mobile technology can foster collaboration beyond physical and organisational boundaries, in general, mobile technology enables a wider amount of interactions between people. Thereby, this paper draws some implications about the knowledge management of creative (and non-creative) workers.

The collected data sheds light on how organisations and individuals positioned themselves about mobile technology co-creative practices before the COVID era. Therefore, it shall be pertinent to further investigate these findings through a quantitative approach to better ascertain path models and to strengthen the new results with another qualitative perspective, in the post-COVID era.

The study highlights how mobile devices are facilitating collaborative innovation practices by improving management decisions, enabling new business and/or operating models, developing a flow of ideas inner/outer an organisation and fostering the ability to make innovation.

Mobile technology transforms the way to work (knowledge creation and/or conversion) and it changes the relations between collaborators in a working environment (beyond physical boundaries). This study deciphers how a creative and/or decision-making person can change their work schedule and/or routines based on the use of mobile devices.

The added value of this transdisciplinary study is that it improves research on collaborative innovation and collective knowledge by revealing three pertinent characteristics of mobile technology: enabling quick decision; connecting with a glocal network and fostering collective creativity. It also creates a bridge between the fields of education and business.