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Introduces the special issue, which looks at the changes experienced by public sector organisations during the last 20 years of the twentieth century, when they were being transformed from a bureaucratic system to a market‐oriented results‐driven system. States that during the 1990s the need for participation, involvement and empowerment of staff began to pervade the thinking of public managers and there was a move away from the old hierarchical command structures in the public sector in order to create more fluid responsive organisations. The issue looks at some of the negative and unanticipated effects of these changes.

This introduction seeks to locate the origins of the competency management in American and British management concerns with declining international competitiveness and the need for more efficient and effective managers. It examines the distinctive American and British approaches and identifies and defines the ideas, concepts and techniques associated with competency in each country. The transfer of these ideas and practices into the public sector accompanied the spread of new public management, which has increased throughout the 1990s. The movement is now an international one prompted by both the OECD and the management consultancy industry. The process of adoption and implementation has tended to be pragmatic and ad hoc but evidence suggests it is now becoming an important vehicle for organisational cultural change. This introduction provides the backdrop for the remaining five articles in this special issue of the journal, which illustrate both developments in theory and practice of competency‐based management within public services.

Competency management is an idea that was developed in the private sector and transposed to the public sector during the 1990s. First this article examines the concept of competency‐based management, its claimed advantages over traditional approaches to personnel management and the problems associated with its use. Second, it describes and analyses the extent of its use in the British civil service based on an empirical survey of 130 civil service departments and agencies carried out in February 2000. Third, it looks in detail at the way that five civil service organisations have developed, and are using, holistic approaches to competency management. Finally, it concludes that although the approach to introducing competency management has, up to now, been fragmented, ad hoc and pragmatic central government pressure to adopt benchmarking and Investors in People personnel strategies is resulting in a more holistic practice of competency‐based management throughout the civil service.

This paper introduces the symposium on public management reform and its impact on public servant's identity. It provides both a descriptive and theoretical context within which the other contributions to the symposium can be located.

It is based on a literature review and a summary of the articles in the symposium

The paper describes the changes associated with new public management (NPM) and its variants and their impact on systems of public administration and public officials. It also highlights the contribution that cultural and social theories, drawn from anthropology and organisational psychology, make to an understanding of the processes by which public servants’ identity are formed and changed. It complements this with an examination of different models of bureaucracy, which reflect the transition from classical public administration to NPM. These concepts and ideas are developed further in other articles in the journal.

It provides an introduction for readers unfamiliar with the core concepts and ideas associated with individual, group and organisational identity and highlights for readers what is central to the research papers in the symposium.

To provide a case study of a Belgian ministry, within the framework of the Copernicus reform.

The paper uses both interpretative and interactionist approaches and a range of research methods including a survey, involving a questionnaire and interviews, content analysis and some elements of speech analysis.

The paper confirms the hypothesis that an identities evolution is taking place following the implementation of new public management (NPM) principles in the Belgian federal service. Using two identity logics “public service,” relating to the principles and values associated with traditional public administration, and “public managerialism”, relating to the principles, values and representations linked to NPM, it distinguishes six identity profiles. These are characterised by their positioning according to two principles fidelity and reality. The conclusion is that organisational identity is complex, hybrid and composite and in constant evolution according to perceptions of reality and context

This adds to the literature on the change process in public organisations under the banner of new public management or modernisation. It illustrates that the change process results in multiple identities with implications for human resources management.

This research paper analyses the extent to which national systems are following “new pay” trends, or whether there are still traditional features, which reflect the specificity of employment in the public sector and the psychological contracts of public servants.

The data used in this paper was based on an online survey of six countries and was completed by pay experts in each case.

Previous comparative research on civil service pay systems has focused mostly on specific aspects of pay but this paper looks at a wide range of pay characteristics. It finds that although there have been changes in pay systems in the six countries studied, the “new pay” model has not been fully adopted and traditional reward systems are still strong, with the exception of Sweden and to a lesser extent the UK and Denmark. This is related to the importance that civil servants attach to their psychological contract in which equity and collectivism remain central values

The paper demonstrates that cultural factors and psychological contracts are important in influencing both practices and attitudes towards change in reward systems across countries and that traditional identities of public service are still evident.

Britain's public sector has undergone a series of radical structural and managerial changes over the past 20 years. These changes are associated with public‐sector reform and innovations in public management. They have impacted significantly on the ways in which public employees are recruited, selected, rewarded, assessed, trained and managed. This article outlines the impact of these changes on staff participation and involvement practices in the civil service, National Health Service (NHS) and local government, and highlights some of the major trends.

This paper examines the effects of performance driven public services on managerial behaviour and the values that influence individual actions.

The approach is historical/institutional within a constructed theoretical framework

Fuelled by the “new public management” movement, public managers are forced to act in performance‐driven ways and instruments like “performance contracts” and “performance‐related pay” are being used to improve managerial behaviour and the professionalism of public officials. Consequently, public managers have acquired personal stakes in public organizations because when they meet organizational targets, they reap financial rewards. More efficiency, lower costs, and less waste, more responsiveness to customers, and increased flexibility are perceived to be good for society. These changes, however, are more than instrumental. They are about changing identities and changing the meaning of acting as a public official. Traditional Weberian ideas about how such organizing furthers the public good have been replaced by a performance‐driven conception of public management, which is strong on organizing, but weak on the public good. The paper concludes that professional public managers must be judged within the context of the “res publica”.

The paper contributes to the debate about professionalism within the context of NPM and whether this is compatible with a view of public service as serving the public interest

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.

To compare and contrast the changes introduced in Canada and Switzerland as a result of public management reforms and explore the ethical challenges they entail.

This is a case study of two countries based in part on secondary sources but also on observations made by the authors.

The strategies used in each country are different reflecting their distinct political institutions. But there is a commonality, namely the emergence of new ethical problems related to the changes under way. Each country has tackled these new ethical challenges in similar ways. Individual and group behaviour of both Canadian and Swiss civil servants is regulated through “external controls” (codes of ethics, rules of conduct), but also by means of the socialization of new professional values (quality of customer service, flexibility, innovation, creativity, efficiency and effectiveness). These external controls and new values are insufficient, however, to allow civil servants to develop their own capacity for ethical deliberation, an essential condition for enhancing ethical behaviour in modern public administrations.

The findings are not based on a systematic comparative study and can only therefore be interpreted as indicative.

The writers offer an interesting model relating to methods of behaviour regulation in an ethical public service and the need to ensure that the public good and the public interest remain at the core of public servants identity.